The Association of Ancient Historians (AAH) had its origins in 1969, when a number of ancient historians from universities in southern Ontario as well as from the State University of New York at Buffalo gathered at McMaster University for a meeting convened by George Paul, to present papers and discuss topics of mutual interest. Over the next four years, annual meetings were organized at SUNY-Buffalo, the University of Michigan, Penn State University, and the University of North Carolina and Duke University. During this period the annual meetings were enlarged and transformed to conferences of an international character. The success of this transformation, and the recognition that ancient historians needed and were capable of supporting a major professional society, prompted at the meeting at Harvard in May of 1974 the forming of the Association of Ancient Historians and the adoption of a constitution.

Over its lifetime, and that of its informal forerunner, the AAH has organized annual meetings at more than thirty different colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.  Its membership has grown to include most of the ancient historians in these two countries and counts members on three other continents. The AAH is the largest organization in North America that is devoted exclusively to promoting teaching and scholarship in ancient history.

The most important activities of the AAH remain its annual meetings.  Click here for a full list of meeting locations, presiding officers, and organizers.  In addition, the AAH reaches out to its membership through a regular newsletter; it sponsors the publication of a series of monographs and has published volumes of collected essays (for details of which see page two of our most recent newsletter ).  It has organized summer institutes for college teachers under the sponsorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  The organization is now in the process of compiling an up-to-date directory of Ancient Historians in North America an on-line version of which will be available as soon as practical.  Members who contribute to these efforts, including the presiding officers, are unpaid.  As a result, the cost of membership and that of the services provided to members remain very low.