Transcript of a lecture by Atholl Anderson on the Indo-Pacific Prehistoric Colonization Project and the Asian Fore-Arc Project. The data obtained in these projects will become the essential nuts and bolts in constructing the prehistory of Indo-Pacific colonization, but they also provide a point of entry into larger questions about how the cultural landscape of the island world came into being. The projects are seeking to investigate the mechanisms, processes and consequences of island colonization, with the intention of understanding Austronesian expansion within the worldwide context of maritime migration.