What is "ambergau"

The Ambergau is a historic landscape and natural region unit in the Innerste Uplands in southern Lower Saxony, Germany. It is a basin, about 10 x 10 kilometres across, with 18 settlements (there were 31 in the Middle Ages), the centre and capital of which since the 13th century is the town of Bockenem. The basin, with its fertile agricultural fields, is surrounded by the wooded ridges of Heber, the Harplage, the Weinberg and the Hainberg. The Gau is a cultural landscape that was formed as early as the 8th century.