‘Not another trendy and incomprehensible title,’ some will sigh. No, the title means what it states, albeit with metaphorical flourish. The Lapita cultural complex of Melanesia and western Polynesia, an entity beloved of a generation of Pacific prehistorians and ever a hot source of debate, can now be shown to have retained at least some links with contemporary populations far to the west of its known distribution. This is significant, not least because some scholars identify the immediate source zone for Lapita as having existed somewhere in the islands of Southeast Asia. At the same time, the obsidian quarried by Lapita artisans from Talasea on the Melanesian island of New Britain can be shown to have been among the most far-traded commodities of the Neolithic world.

The essays in this special section on early settlement in Island Southeast Asia may be puzzling to readers of Antiquity who are uninitiated to the ways and concerns of archaeologists working in the Pacific. Some of these authors appear almost reluctant to draw conclusions from the evidence they survey. Others champion their own interpretations unequivocally. What is going on here?

It may be, as some say, that academics are by nature a quarrelsome lot. Even so, why is the Lapita cultural complex ‘ever a hot source of debate’ (Bellwood & Koon, above, p. 613)? The essays published here may lack the direct cantankerousness of face-to-face confronat international symposia and professional meetings, but they reinforce the suggestion made in Antiquity a year ago that archaeologists in the Pacific today have come to a crossroads where we often find ourselves talking past each other because we are no longer in general agreement on what is interesting about Pacific prehistory and why (Terrell 1988).