The Gepids' history in the is unknown, because no written source mentioned them during this period. The silence of the Roman sources suggests that their homeland did not border on the Roman Empire. On the basis of Jordanes' reference to the "rugged mountains" of the Gepids' land, historians locate it near the Carpathians, along the upper courses of either the Tisza or the Dniester rivers, in the late . The exact date of the Gepids' settlement in the Carpathian Basin cannot exactly be determined. Archaeologist István Bóna says they were present in the northeastern region already in the 260s. According to Coriolan H. Opreanu, they seem to have arrived around 300. Archaeologists Eszter Istvánovits and Valéria Kulcsár write that no archaeological evidence substantiates the Gepids' presence before around 350.