ABSTRACT
This chapter traces funerary rhetorics at the unsettled scene of Nabataean tombs in Petra, Jordan, during the first century BCE and first century CE. These tombs sites were a gathering place for the nomadic sect and induced a flurry of effects, shifting moods, altering mindsets, and prompting ceremonial activity. This tomb analysis stems from my in situ fieldwork at the Petra Archaeological Park. In addition to my analysis, my chapter explores the implications of archaeological research methods in rhetorical historiography. As Richard Leo Enos, Kathleen Lamp, and others have demonstrated, studying material culture in situ provides access to different kinds of historical evidence to understand how rhetoric transformed in a city where discursive evidence is found lacking. Drawing from Tim Ingold and Gary Tomlinson, my analysis theorizes the tombs as a “taskscape” that transformed through collective acts of “dwelling.” This comparative historiography engages New Materialism to understand how material places and material culture rhetorically influence how the social is performed and enacted, shaping public memories, values, identities, and rituals. Further, this chapter proposes that making room for new materialist approaches to comparative historiography offers a pathway forward for understanding how rhetoric has transformed in global places so that we might begin to reinvent rhetoric in the future.
