Exactly. Stacked charts in general are misleading because they imply volume as a metric to be evaluated, when in any sort of number-over-time chart, volume is the last thing you need people concentrating on.
I wasn't aware of Marimekko charts[1] (well, not by that name anyway) before reading your comment -- but are they commonly used with a time axis? In the examples in [1] they seem like a pretty straight forward visualization of volume?
Off the top of my head I can't think of an example where a time axis wouldn't normally be used to visualize variation over time...? Perhaps quarter earnings as contributing to yearly earnings?