Archaeology is about people; it is about constructing an understanding concerning people in the past by using an array of resources. One way of attempting to understand the potential difference between the constructor, that is the archaeologist, and the lives of the past being constructed, is to look to the sources of the recent past, that is, the primary and secondary historical texts reporting encounters between outsiders and the people of the region. These direct texts begin with the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan in the sixteenth century. Another source, and one that has had as its aim the description of the differences of the lives of the people of these islands, is the ethnographic and synthetic texts of anthropologists.

It is less the case for the anthropological works, but still of some concern, that the majority of these texts are not vehicles for a direct hearing of islander voices. Some of the work, such as parts of the ethnohistorical work of David Hanlon, is drawn directly from oral history, and other works discussed in this book by Rufino Mauricio and Vicente Diaz are the work of islander academics. These are certainly the exceptions rather than the rule and we should constantly keep in mind the words of Epeli Hau'ofa, published nearly three decades ago, that ‘[w]hen [as anthropologists] we produce our articles and monographs and they [the people of the study] or their grandchildren read them, they often cannot see themselves or they see themselves being distorted or misrepresented’ (1975: 284).