a tendency towards cultural unification in Moldavia, Oltenia and Wallachia. Handmade pots with very similar incised designs evidence the "existence of a cross-regional set of symbols shared" by either potters or consumers. Pots, spindle whorls and other objects decorated with crosses or swastikas have been unearthed at Cândeşti, Lozna, and other sites. The use of handmade clay pans for baking bread was spreading from the regions south and east of the Carpathians towards lands over the Dniester and the Lower Danube. Avar Empire (c. 565–c. 800) The Avars occupied Gepidia in 567, less than a decade after their arrival in Europe. They were nomadic pastoralists, who settled in the lowlands. Stirrups found at Sânpetru German are among the earliest finds in Romania attributed to the Avars. They received agricultural products from farming communities settled in their domains and neighboring peoples subjected to their authority. Emperor Justin II hired, in 578, the Avars to attack the Sclavenes who resumed their plundering raids against the empire around that time. The names of some of the Sclavene leaders were first recorded in the following period. One of them, Musocius, "was called rex in the barbarian tongue". Graves of males interred together with horses found at Aiud and Band prove the Avars' settlement in Transylvania in the early 7th century. Their cemeteries are centered around salt mines. Spursnever found in Avar context but widely used in Western Slav territories were unearthed in Şura Mică and Medişoru Mare, suggesting the employment of non-Avar horsemen in the 8th century. Large "Late Avar" cemeteries used by several generations between c. 700 and c. 800 imply "an advanced degree of sedentization" of the entire society. The Avar Empire collapsed after the Franks launched three campaigns against the westernmost Avar territories between 791 and 803. Soon afterwards the Bulgars attacked the Avars from the southeast, and Charlemagne settled Avar groups in Pannonia. Emergence of new powers (c. 600–c. 895) The Lower Danube region experienced a period of stability after the establishment of the Avar Empire. Archaeological sites in Moldavia, Oltenia and Wallachia became characterized by the growing popularity of hand-made vessels with finger impressions and by a decline in detectable cemeteries. Ananias of Shirak, a 7th-century Armenian geographer described the "large country of Dacia" as inhabited by Slavs who formed "twenty-five tribes". Villages of sunken huts with stone ovens appeared in Transylvania around 600. Their network was expanding along