While Oceanic forms of exchange — encompassing kula-type trade partnerships, collective prestations of ranked valuables, competitive feasts and transactions closer to the old stereotype of utilitarian barter — are bewilderingly diverse, there can be no doubt that the prominence of exchange, in whatever form, is a pervasive and fundamental feature of these Austronesian societies. Even in eastern Polynesia, where regional trade is limited and in some cases nonexistent, localized competitive reciprocity was, as we have seen, central to the production, reproduction and transformation of hierarchical relationships. In western Oceania, however, it is also notable that the non-Austronesian societies of New Guinea were similarly exchange-oriented; this is true not only of the coastal regions which can be seen to have been heavily influenced by Austronesian populations, but also of the highlands, where there can hardly have been direct contact. This general congruence has permitted many anthropological discussions to ignore the Austronesian/Papuan distinction and argue comparatively about “Melanesian” exchange, without reference to the linguistic and prehistoric differences. While this approach, like the earlier treatment of Melanesian leadership in terms of a generalized big man model, seems inadequate, I too have found terms developed for the analysis of highlands societies relevant, in adapted form, to the wider range of Oceanic variation. The parallels between Papuan and Austronesian forms present scholars with a peculiarly difficult problem: is it most likely that the two populations were autonomously similar in this respect; or should exchange systems in the highlands be seen as a long-distance product, though obviously one that is locally incorporated, of ramifying and expansive coastal exchange; or should forms such as the moka and tee be considered simply as independent developments, which very likely postdate the Austronesian settlement of coastal New Guinea and adjacent archipelagoes, but which have no particular connection with or dependence upon that change in the less immediate social environment? Any responses to such questions would, of course, be highly speculative; they would also be tentative because there are few models for addressing problems of such an order in either prehistory or anthropology: the first discipline’s interest in social processes is too limited, while that of the second in longer-term transformations has been equally attenuated. Given the evident expansiveness of exchange in many Austronesian societies, it would however seem worth exploring the possibility that these dynamics are inherently expansive and invasive and that in the longer run the movements of objects such as pearlshells may have effected the transposition of Austronesian forms of sociality, well beyond the apparent geographic and linguistic Austronesian boundaries.