Khomyakova O.A.

Key words: South-Eastern Baltics, Roman period, West Baltic circle, Sambian-Natangiyan culture, Dollkeim-Kovrovo culture.

The article considers the definitions of the West Baltic circle and the archaeological community of the first centuries of the first millennium AD situated on the territory of modern Kaliningrad peninsula. The problem of its denomination and correlation with the “group” and “culture” is also covered in this work. The community was detached by O. Tishler and later considered repeatedly in a range of works of the beginning of the 20^th c. including K. Engel who gave the most extensive definition. In the second half of the 20th c. this definition was developed by the archaeologists of the Polish school. The archaeologists of the former USSR have also made their own approaches to the studying of this community. Nowadays the community is considered to be one of the cultures of the West Baltic circle. There are two definitions of it – “Sambian-Natangiyan culture” and “Dollkeim-Kovrovo culture”. They reflect two different academic approaches to the notion “archaeological culture” – the former connects it straightly with its ethnic group and the latter cast doubt on the direct correlation of archaeological classification and group identification with ethnicity.