A village settlement consisted of more than just a cluster of pile-dwelling houses. The settlement itself included the surrounding area within a radius of around 2.5 kilometres. The size of this so-called settlement area can be deduced from the distances between the individual village settlements on Lake Constance. The organisation of this area was based on a well-thought-out plan. The decisive criterion for choosing the location was the best possible conditions for a good life, starting with the quality of the arable land for growing crops in an early three-field system with short-term fallow. Adjacent areas were used for pasture farming. In the peripheral zones lay the commercial forests for felling firewood and building materials for house construction, for gathering fruit, for hunting and for woodland grazing. The lakeshore zone was reserved for landing stages, trade and the pile dwellings.

After around 15 to 20 years, the arable land was depleted – despite fertilisation by livestock and careful management. The forest, too, was exhausted after several cycles of clearing. Gaps in the settlement records of the villages, as well as alternating dates for neighbouring settlements, suggest that the pile-dwelling people had two options for solving this problem, and made use of them: either they divided the settlement and one group moved on, or the entire village community sought out a new settlement area.

In the case of Uhldingen, the available data suggests that the settlements were established alternately on the left and right banks of the Seefelder Aach. In Switzerland, by contrast, successive settlements are often located only a short distance apart.