The purpose of this roundtable is to re-assess our relationship with “ancient history.” Academics routinely define it as (i) post-“pre-history;” (ii) often focused on the textual remains of early forms of “civilization;” (iii) frequently equated with Greece and Rome (yet sometimes more broadly conceived); and (iv) legitimated with reference to supposed continuities with and relevance for the present. Outside the Ivory Tower, however, colloquial usage pushes in the opposite direction: the expression “that’s ancient history” signals irrelevance and obsolescence. Whether in academia or in the public consciousness, the prospects of ancient history as a field of teaching and research are dim. While little remains of the institutionalized worship of Greece and Rome, no compelling alternative forms of engagement have become prevalent. As subdisciplinary fragmentation and professional hyperspecialization reign supreme, there is no coherent vision of what antiquity was and why it matters.

In a recent manifesto for reform, What Is Ancient History? (2025), Walter Scheidel reimagines antiquity more expansively in terms of both scope and impact by defining it as a foundational phase in human development that eventually put the whole planet on a narrowing trajectory towards the configuration of norms and practices that shape the world today. This global antiquity, which covers much of the Holocene, was the phase of human history when the earliest versions of today’s social, political, economic, and cultural lifeways were created and spread. Transforming the planet, this process unfolded all over the world, in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas, often at different times, sometimes haltingly or non-linearly, but ultimately pervasively. From that perspective, for good or ill, the present is a direct outgrowth of this phase to an extent that goes far beyond conventional notions of particular civilizational lineages. Whether or not “we have never been modern,” this approach invites us to consider how we are still meaningfully “ancient.”

This roundtable brings together interlocutors from a wide range of historical subfields to engage each other and the audience in a critical conversation about this vision and more generally about the need to reform existing approaches to antiquity. Contributors will raise substantive, conceptual, practical, and ethical questions related to this project. The driving question behind the roundtable as a whole – which further develops the key theme of the plenary session (“The New Global Antiquity”) – is which ways of framing “ancient history” best capture the subject matter and are most appropriate for our globalized age.