ABSTRACT
In general, archaeological objects are grounded in a time other than our own. As Gosden and Marshall (1999) point out, they are also grounded in a separate context. An object may have a "cultural biography" that references its setting within a culture. Through the life of the object, meaning and relationships may evolve, "as people and objects gather time, movement and change, they are constantly transformed, and these transformations of persons and objects are tied up with each other" (Gosden and Marshall 1999, 169). By the time an object comes to be in a museum collection, it has gone through many different identities, from cultural object intended for use of one kind to a scholarly object intended for use of a very different kind.
