This blog began with a series of entries under the heading AWOL on the Ancient World Bloggers Group Blog. I have decided to move it to its own space here beginning in 2009. The primary focus of the blog will be notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available. The ancient world here is conceived as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.