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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Archaeological chronologies tend to conflate temporalities from all culturalcontexts in a region without consideration for the different depositionaltrajectories and life histories of the objects that serve as the basis of thosechronologies. Social variables, such as gender, age, status, and individualmobility, act on artifacts in ways that must be identified and differentiated inorder for seriations derived from one context to be applicable in another. Thisarticle presents evidence from early Iron Age contexts in Southwest Germany toillustrate this phenomenon and discusses its ramifications from the perspectiveof a case study focusing on the mortuary landscape of the Heuneburg hillfort onthe Danube River. Gender in particular is strongly marked in this society andcan be shown to affect the depositional tempo of certain artifact categories,which have different social lives and depositional fates depending on context.Artifact assemblages vary not only in terms of archaeological context andtemporality but also are impacted by the social personae of the human agentsresponsible for, or associated with, their deposition.