Between 7th and 17th November 1999 an early saxon house based on nearby excavations was built at the village of Authausen , near Bad Dueben in Saxony. Bad Dueben lies about 30 kilometres north west of Leipzig on the edge of a large open area of heathland and forest. This has been designated a natural park, the "Naturpark Duebener Heide" and is an area of outstanding natural beauty. "Heide" means heath. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the effectiveness of full scale three dimensional reconstruction and to attract interest in the concept of historical reconstruction with the aim, ultimately, of reconstructing an entire early saxon village as part of the natural park.
This area of Germany, close to the river Elbe, witnessed wave upon waveof migrating tribes over a period of nearly a thousand years. The pattern always repeated itself : tribes, originating in central asia, were pushed westwards by the pressure of other tribes behind them and settled on the fertile plain of the River Elbe, only to be pushed further westwards as the tribes from which they sought to escape were driven westwards in their turn, forced out by others behind them.
At the time at which the house was built, around the second to third centuries, the Duebener Heide was occupied by a tribe known as the Hermunduren, one of many Germanic tribes.
The house itself measures 10.4metres long by 5.3metres wide. It contains two spaces, a larger one for humans and a smaller one for animals. The human occupants would have been a farmer and his family; the animals probably just a cow and perhaps also a pig.
The photo top left shows the people who built the house.They consists of a group of students from Scotland and England, and a group of carpenters from Denmark, Finnland, Slovakia, Iceland, England,Germany and an architect from Scotland.
The Links below lead to a description of how this project was organised, how it was built, and what remains to be done in order to complete it.