title: Listening For Ancient Gods: Archaeoacoustics: A study of the world's oldest buildings and the archaeology of sound, with new implications for how we came to be who we are.
author: Linda C Eneix
description: Linda C. Eneix works with archaeologists, anthropologists, architects, engineers, historians and other specialists toward a multi-disciplinary understanding of the Neolithic phenomenon. She is the organizer of several international multi-disciplinary conferences on Archaeoacoustics and is the editor of the subsequent publications. An international member of the ICOMOS National Committee on Interpretation and Presentation of Heritage Sites, member of European Association for Heritage Interpretation e.V., and member of the Archaeological Institute of America, she has lectured widely on Maltas megalithic monuments including for the Smithsonian Associates, has been consulted for film, television and print media in the USA and Europe, and has appeared on international television. She is also responsible for the design and operation of educational programming in Malta for Road Scholars Adventures in Lifelong Learning.
zlib_text: [JNES 75 no. 2 (2016)] © 2016 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 022–2968–2016/7501–002 $10.00. DOI: 10.1086/687227
  291
  When Gods Speak to Men: Reading 
  House, Street, and Divination from 
  Sound in Ancient Mesopotamia  
  (1st millenium Bc)
  anne-caroline rendu loisel, University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès*
  In La splendeur divine published in 1968, the Assyri-
  ologist Elena Cassin drew attention to the fact that 
  man is a sensory entity. His relationship with his en-
  vironment—other humans, gods, animals or Nature 
  in general—depends on what he perceives through 
  his senses. Noise, light and movement characterize 
  the human world, whereas the world before the cre-
  ation of mankind is conceived of as deeply silent, dark, 
  and motionless. Above all, noise plays a crucial role 
  for the society of the ancient Near East: the Baby-
  lonian story of the Flood tells how the gods became 
  so angry about the loud noise humankind was making 
  that that they decided to destroy it. But that 