Toward a Biocultural Synthesis of the Peopling of the Americas: Introduction to the Special Issue

This article introduces the special issue Toward a Biocultural Synthesis of the Peopling of the Americas, which brings together contributions that explore the origins and diversity of Indigenous populations across North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. The volume grew out of an invited symposium held at the 90th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists and reflects a shared commitment to methodological pluralism, regional specificity, and ethical collaboration. By integrating genetic, skeletal, linguistic, and archaeological data with Indigenous perspectives and regional histories, the papers assembled here challenge overly linear and homogenizing models of human dispersion. They highlight the value of explanatory dissonance-tensions between datasets, temporal scales, and epistemic traditions-as a productive resource for understanding the complexity of human history. The issue's contributions range from simulation models and morphometric analyses to isotopic reconstructions and linguistic typology, offering complementary insights into population continuity, interaction, and diversification across the Americas. Commentaries by María Nieves-Colón and Rolando González-José situate these studies within broader disciplinary and epistemic debates, emphasizing the need for integrative, decolonial, and collaborative approaches. Together, the articles and commentaries demonstrate that the most meaningful advances in the study of the peopling of the Americas now emerge from explicitly biocultural frameworks that link biological variation, cultural history, and ethical engagement in the production of anthropological knowledge.