К проблеме финала черняховской культуры
On the Problem of the End of Cherniakhov Culture

Summary/Abstract: The main ideas of this paper are the following:1. We are compelled to reject the traditional understanding of stages and phases of relative chronology as a range of certain “squares” or “rectangles”, which subsequently replace each other over time, no matter whether it is general European chronological system or internal division of Cherniakhov culture. Such “square approach” will inevitably cause contradictions and discrepancies. While calculating absolute dates, it always happens that typologically alternating stages widely superimpose and co-exist practically in parallel.2. A solution of this paradoxical situation, as we see it, is just one: we must change the very “paradigm” of our chronological thinking and see our stages and phases as some certain “rhombuses”. Then they will be to some extent superimposing, and will follow each other at the points of maximum width.3. With such “rhombic approach” the Cherniakhov culture does not stop existing unexpectedly by 375, which was taken, by the way, as a premise by many researchers when estimating the European system; rather, a number of Cherniakhov cemeteries and settlements, while gradually “fading away”, went on further functioning, up to the middle of V c. It complies also with the historical situation: part of Ostrogoths remained in their places of habitation till the battle of Nedao in 455.

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