A life assemblage is a group of fossils of organisms that lived together, preserved where and as they lived; a death assemblage is a group of remains brought together after death, which may mix organisms of different places and different times. A fossil is autochthonous if it is preserved where the organism lived, and allochthonous if it was transported from elsewhere before burial.
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Example 20.10 (The base of the Varden cover)
The sandstone holds channel fills on scoured bases, roots and plant fragments, and no marine fossil: it was laid down by rivers on land. The oolitic limestone above has cross-bedded ooids, which grow as they roll in agitated water, vertical tubes and U-shaped burrows of the Skolithos ichnofacies, and worn shell fragments, all allochthonous: a shoal of the shoreface, swept by waves. Between the two the sea arrived: the contact records a marine transgression. In the order of Walther’s law, the river plain was followed by the shore, then the shoal.