Editing Leicester (section)

===Prehistory===
Leicester is one of the oldest cities in England, with a history going back at least two millennia.<ref>W. G. Hoskins, "Leicester" ''History Today'' (Sep 1951) 1#9 pp 48–56.</ref> The [[Britons (Celtic people)|native]] [[British Iron Age|Iron Age]] settlement encountered by the [[Ancient Romans|Romans]] at the site seems to have developed in the 2nd or 1st centuries [[Anno Domini|BC]], around a century or so before the arrival of the Romans.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archsearch/record.jsf?titleId=1919223 |title=Archaeology Data Service |website=Archaeologydataservice.ac.uk |access-date=27 June 2022}}</ref> Little is known about this settlement or the condition of the [[River Soar]] at this time, although [[Roundhouse (dwelling)|roundhouses]] from this era have been excavated and seem to have clustered along roughly {{convert|8|ha}} of the east bank of the Soar. This area of the Soar was split into two channels: a main stream to the east and a narrower channel on the west, with a presumably marshy island between. The settlement seems to have controlled a ford across the larger channel. The [[Ratae Corieltauvorum#Name|later Roman name]] was a [[Latinization of names|latinate]] form of the [[Common Brittonic|Brittonic]] word for "ramparts" (cf. [[Irish Gaelic|Gaelic]] ''[[Ringfort|rath]]'' and the nearby villages of [[Ratby]] and [[Ratcliffe-upon-Soar|Ratcliffe]]<ref name=tommyA/>), suggesting the site was an [[oppidum]]. The plural form of the name suggests it was initially composed of several villages.<ref name=tommyA>Thompson (1849), [https://books.google.com/books?id=xBYVAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA443 Appendix&nbsp;A: Ratæ—Roman Leicester, pp.&nbsp;443&nbsp;ff] {{Webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150519190739/https://books.google.com/books?id=xBYVAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA443 |date=19 May 2015 }}.</ref> The [[list of Celtic tribes|Celtic tribe]] holding the area was later recorded as the "[[Coritani]]ans" but an inscription recovered in 1983 showed this to have been a corruption of the original "[[Corieltauvi]]ans".<ref name="TLAHS">{{cite journal |last=Tomlin |first=R S O |year=1983 |title=Roman Leicester, a Corrigendum: For Coritani should we read Corieltauvi? |journal=Transactions of the Leicester Archaeological and Historical Society |volume=48}}</ref><ref name="AJ">{{cite journal |last=Tomlin |first=R S O |year=1983 |title=Non Coritani sed Corieltauvi |journal=[[The Antiquaries Journal]] |volume=63 |issue=2 |pages=353–355 |doi=10.1017/s0003581500066579 |s2cid=161713854}}</ref> The Corieltauvians are believed to have ruled over roughly the area of the [[East Midlands]].