In each of these regions, the specific challenge is site identification — finding sites from the relevant time periods that contain human remains in conditions suitable for ancient DNA preservation.

This challenge is addressed through the expansion of archaeological survey and excavation in these regions, through the application of new remote sensing technologies that can identify buried sites without surface disturbance, and through the development of new analytical methods that can extract useful genomic information from increasingly degraded samples.

The field is also expanding its geographic scope within the Americas.

Ancient DNA from the Amazon basin, from the Caribbean, from Mesoamerica, and from the Andes and Patagonia is beginning to fill in the picture of how the founding population diversified as it spread through the hemisphere.