This research approaches archaeological human remains in museum collections from a rhetorical perspective. Instead of joining the body of scholarship in museum studies that focuses on the process of curatorial interpretation, this project applies public memory studies to explore what happens to curatorial interpretation when it goes out into the world and is taken up in public circulated discourse. With a focus on publics, the moment of knowledge construction when visitors approach a display of human remains in a museum is captured and analyzed through the lenses of new materialism, rhetoric in situ, and public memory studies. Each lens represents the chosen approach to each of the three elements that converge at the moment of knowledge construction ? publics, objects, and place ? which are grouped together as a triangle of interrelated dynamics all working in a situationally-contingent rhetorical ecology of other factors and influences. Thus, the dynamic inseparable trio of publics, objects, and place are coined the ?ecotriangle.? For museum studies, rhetoric?s foundational work can provide critical perspective into the nature of communication and meaning-making that happens when publics meet human remains in a museum space. In order to explore the ecotriangular relationship of publics, objects, and place with an interdisciplinary approach, this project begins by interrogating the implicit assumptions within the defitions of terms like ?public? and ?object? then develops collaborative definitions from the scholarship in rhetoric, archaeology, and museum studies. The particular case of human remains challenges most scholarships? definitions of object. Yet as this research reveals, human remains as case study help develop and refine the approach to objects, materiality, interpretation, and museum display when challenged to inclusively frame such a case instead of treat human remains as an exception or outlier to scholarship on objects. Exploring the ecotriangle as a heuristic model for conceptualization of interrelational dynamics in knowledge construction extends current scholarship in rhetoric, especially rhetoric in situ and rhetorical ecology, and also reinforces existing interdisciplinary bridges between the fields of rhetoric, archaeology, and museum studies.

The objects discovered in Tomb 79 at the necropolis of Salamis, Cyprus have garnered much attention since their discovery. The material from this tomb, however, needs an in-depth, object-by-object analysis that will lead to a greater understanding of the burial as a whole. In my thesis, I offer a detailed case study of a single item, an ivory-covered wooden chair—so-called Throne Γ—as exemplifying an approach to this analysis. Based on the excavation team’s exacting reconstruction, the chair is four-legged with armrests and a slightly curved backrest. Ivory overlays the entirety of the chair except on a few sections of the backrest where the wood shows through. Here as well, both figural and geometric designs decorate the ivory, and the top bar was originally overlaid with gold. As a whole, Throne Γ would have appeared as a solid ivory object, embellished with wood and gold, and was likely draped with textiles. In this study, I analyze Throne Γ as an agent of identity. To do so, I follow the example of other scholars such as Irene Winter and Marian Feldman and employ the theory of object agency, addressing Throne Γ as an affective entity. When placed in a social context—i.e., when involved in human interaction—such agentive objects actively influence their surroundings. In this case, I analyze how Throne Γ affected the individual in whose tomb it was buried. I argue that through its various affective “mechanisms”—its nature as a luxury object, the value of its ivory material, its sensory qualities (including luminosity, texture, and fragrance), its iconography, and its ritual function—Throne Γ projected a king-like identity upon the deceased individual from Tomb 79. His actual political and social power during his lifetime, however, may have been less than that suggested by the mechanisms of the chair. The inclusion of Throne Γ in the burial was therefore a conscious choice and the identity the chair projected deliberate. It was meant to agentively mark, and thus legitimize, the deceased as a politically-able, diplomatically-savvy, and divinely-touched figure in the early days of monarchy on Cyprus. / text

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