A first attempt to join the two distinct disciplines of Musicology and Archaeology took place at the conference of the International Musicological Society at Berkeley in 1977. One of the round tables was designated "Music and Archaeology", to which were invited specialists to discuss the musical remains of ancient cultures - Bathia Bayer (Israel), Charles Boilès (Mexico), Ellen Hickmann (Egypt), David Liang (China), Casja Lund (Scandinavia).
The main stimulus for this was the sensational discovery of an ancient Mesopotamian musical system by Anne D. Kilmer, assyriologist in Berkeley. On the basis of this she was able to advance a decipherment and transcription into Western notation of a late Bronze Age hymn in the Hurrian language, excavated from Ugarit, which contained notation based on the Mesopotamian system.
With the help of musicologist Richard L. Crocker (Berkeley) and instrument maker Robert Brown, a replica of a Sumerian lyre was made, and Kilmer's version of the Hurrian hymn was recorded, accompanied by a carefully prepared commentary, as Kilmer/Crocker/Brown, Sounds from Silence, Recent Discoveries in Ancient Eastern Music (LP with information booklet, Bit Enki Publications, Berkeley, 1976).
At the round table in Berkeley, Kilmer explained their method of reconstruction and demonstrated the resulting sound. This was the starting point of the "Study Group on Music Archaeology", officially founded within the International Council for Traditional Music in Seoul/Korea in 1981, and recognized by the ICTM in New York in 1983 following its first meeting on current music-archaeological research in Cambridge/UK in 1982.
The Study Group on Music Archaeology went on to hold international conferences in Stockholm (1984), Hannover/Wolfenbüttel (1986), Saint Germain-en-Laye (1990), Liège (1992), Istanbul (1993), Jerusalem (1994/1995, together with the ICTM-Study Group for Iconography), and Limassol, Cyprus (1996). These meetings resulted in comprehensive conference reports.
The Limassol conference was a turning point in the procedures of the Study Group. It was decided to leave the ICTM for closer cooperation with archaeologists, and the group was renamed the International Study Group on Music Archaeology (ISGMA). Since then, the ISGMA has worked continuously with the German Archaeological Institute, Berlin (DAI, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin).
A new series called "Studien zur Musikarchäologie" was created as a sub-series of "Orient-Archäologie" to present the conference reports of the ISGMA, and to integrate music-archaeological monographs independent of the Study Group's meetings; it is published by the Orient Department of the DAI through the Verlag Marie Leidorf.
Between 1998 and 2004, conferences of ISGMA were held every two years at Michaelstein Monastary, Music Academy of Sachsen-Anhalt (Kloster Michaelstein, Landesmusikakademie Sachsen-Anhalt), sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
In close cooperation with the Department for Ethnomusicology at the Ethnological Museum Berlin (Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, SMB SPK, Abteilung Musikethnologie, Medien-Technik und Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv), the 5th and 6th Symposium of the ISGMA were held in 2006 respectively in 2008 at the Ethnological Museum Berlin.
In friendly cooperation with the Tianjin Conservatory of Music , the 7th Symposium of the ISGMA was held in Tianjin, China, in 2010.
The Study Group receives requests for material contributions, scholarly consultation and public performances. The activities and publications of the ISGMA have attracted many interested colleagues from all over the world. Four researchers from its very beginning, Anne D. Kilmer, Ellen Hickmann, Graeme Lawson, and Bo Lawergren, are still with the Study Group, which now has a pool of about 80 researchers from all over the world who continuously correspond and work with each other.