pottery, including urns. The Iron Age between 700BC and AD43 saw a significant increase in the density of settlement in the area, with evidence of a large number of farming settlements encompassing both arable and pastoral agriculture, each probably occupied by a single family group. Iron Age pottery has been found at a wide variety of sites within the city centre, including the north bailey of the Castle, Low Pavement, Fisher Gate, Halifax Place and a shallow ditch between Woolpack Lane and Barker Gate. Excavations of settlements at Gamston provided evidence of small-scale pottery and textile industries and extensive trading links, with salt from Cheshire, pottery from Charnwood Forest and querns from the Pennines. The importance of the Trent as a trade route during the period has been shown by the discovery of three dugout canoes and a spoked wheel dating from the Iron Age in the gravels at Holme Pierrepont. Iron Age ditches have been excavated at Nottingham Castle and at several sites in the Lace Market, suggesting that pre-historic fortifications in these areas are possible. Nottingham is notable for its lack of evidence of occupation during the Roman era. Although the Fosse Way was one of Britain's major Roman roads and passed within six miles to the south of Nottingham, there is no record of any crossing of the Trent or settlement close to the site of the modern city. After the Roman departure at around 410 AD, independent Brythonic kingdoms emerged everywhere in Britain. The Nottinghamshire area was briefly covered by the kingdom of Elmet from the late 5th century to the beginning of the 7th century. Anglo-Saxon era In Anglo-Saxon times, around 600 AD, the site formed part of the Kingdom of Mercia, where it may have been known as "Tig Guocobauc" (though this is only known from the later 9th-century account of the Welsh cleric Asser, active at the court of Alfred the Great) meaning in Brythonic "a place of cave dwellings", until falling under the rule of a Saxon chieftain named Snot, whereby it was dubbed "Snotingaham" literally, "the homestead of Snot's people" (Inga = the people of; Ham = homestead). Snot brought together his people in an area where the historic Lace Market in the city can now be found. The first documentary record of Nottingham is as Snotengaham in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 868. Names of this form normally represent settlements