Shields of Melanesia is the first comprehensive book of its kind and illustrates more than 100 types of shields from all culture areas of Melanesia that used such objects. Around 80 per cent of the shields illustrated have never before been published. The book also explains why the use of fighting shields in the South Pacific was confined to Melanesia. Adrienne Kaeppler, one of the foremost authorities on the cultures of Micronesia and Polynesia, has contributed a chapter on the protective devices other than shields that were used in those societies, and explains why shields were not used. The typology of war shields used in the book is based on an exhaustive survey of the literature, on the field experiences of the authors, and on a survey of the collections of the major Australian museums.