The „Wasserburg Buchau“ is situated some 65 kilometres north-east of Unteruhldingen on Lake Federsee. Archaeological excavations carried out between 1921 and 1937 uncovered 34 log cabins, six wattle-and-daub huts and nine farmsteads dating from the 11th to the 9th century BC. A palisade made of 15,000 pine trunks had enclosed the settlement. The excellent state of preservation of the finds enabled a wide-ranging investigation using scientific methods such as pollen analysis, dating based on the growth rings of the timber used, and aerial archaeology.

An interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, model makers and carpenters first produced small models of the villages, which met with great interest at the Unteruhldingen Lake Dwelling Association – and gave rise to an idea: why not add a Bronze Age settlement to the Stone Age houses on Lake Constance? Thus, based on the results of the Buchau excavations, a scientifically sound reconstruction of the houses on a 1:1 scale was created on a platform in Lake Constance that had already been erected in 1923. The debate at the time as to whether pile dwellings were located on land, in the water or on islands, as in the Federsee moor, has long since been settled: all three construction methods have been proven.

Contrary to the original assumption that the moated settlement of Buchau had developed in just two settlement phases, further investigations using tree-ring dating revealed five construction phases spanning the period from 1058 to 860 BC: following the construction of the first houses, the settlement was enclosed by a ring palisade with two gateways in 1000 BC. Around 950 and 860 BC, it had to be protected against flooding on two further occasions.

However, none of these protective measures could prevent Buchau – just like the village of Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen and many others in Germany and Switzerland – from being submerged in a kind of deluge around 850 BC due to a permanent rise in lake levels.