The Avar culture spread in Transilvania in the 867 start date is wrong, historically the Avars didn't have such a strong cultural presence and did not populate the mountainous and dense forest regions the inside the Carpathians (should be Vlach instead) and in fact the Avars first settled along the Maris and Tisa rivers as shown by the strong archeological evidence found in those areas.
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1) Map showing the passage the Avars took through Transilvania and their center of power along the Maris and Tisa rivers.
2) Map showing the spread of Avar artefacts in the Pannonian basin, as you can see most artefacts uncovered in Transilvania are around the Crișana region ((Maris and Tisa rivers) and while some remains were found in Banat, and Intracarpathia area too, they are too few compared to the other areas to suggest a strong Avar presence there and mostly around the ruins of the old romans castrums as the Avar remains found in Apahida and Turda sugest. (Note the white areas in Intracarpathia where no Avar remains were found).
Avar archeological remains are easy to discern from other due to their specific inventary of items, as they were often burried with their horse and bow along with other characteristic cultural elements.
Slavs first came to the Carpathian Basin along with the Avars and in Transilvania their settlements can be found all over (yellow areas included) but more in Banat, Marmaros and Intracarpathian region (Areas marked red on the second map). While the Avars (the rulling/dominating class) focused on ocuppying the old Roman castrums ( easily defensible positions) and the areas with important resources (as are the salt mines in Torda) the Slavs ocuppyied the countrysides where they came into contact with the
romance speaking populations (known as the
Bratei-Morești culture by historians with settlements and remains found in Alba, Sibiu, Mureș, Cluj, Biharea counties and others). The populations of this culture, retains in the ceramic style aspects from the roman ceramics, aswell as the technology of making pottery using the the wheel rather than handworked (as the slavs had). Later on wheel pottery will become generalised again as the slavs will came into contact with the romance population.
Between the VIII - X centuries the slavs will become assimilated with them resulting in the formation of the Vlachs people, ethnogenesis which by the 867 start date when the Bulgarian Empire is about to fall, is mostly finished.
In game, Vlachs have a strong presence in the Banat, Severin and Oltenia regions, whitch is corect since they were regions that were held the longest by the Roman Empire but their attested presence in Intracarpathia is wholly neglected, as shown in my posts Avar should not be there and instead Vlachs culture should ocupy the provinces closests to the Carpathian mountains.
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Here, in the most horrible paint skills you have ever seen, you can see with red dots the teritories Vlachs ocuppy curently in CK3 , and with orange the suggested territories they should ocuppy. Avar culture should be where Cluj, Oradea, Seghedin, Debretin is on the map that is plains, major rivers areas.
Sources : Maps 1/2 - Kevin Alexander - The Avars in Pannonia and Transylvania
Maps 2/4 - poor photoshop skills
Archeological evidence for the Avars/Slavs/Romance populations - History of Transilvania Vol I - Ioan Aurel Pop, Thomas Nagler, Andras Magyari - ed III 2016
- The Dacian Stones Speak - Paul Lachlan McKendrick
- English wikipedia
- Magyar expansion in Transilvania - Alexandru Madgearu - 2019
