Her honors include appointment to the National Humanities Faculty, a Featherhead Fellowship at the School of American Research in Santa Fe; the Charles Borden, Geoffrey Bushnell and Juan Comas Prize in linguistics at the International Congress of Americanists; two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships; a visiting appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; and an invited lecture on Maya astronomy at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

Past director of the American Studies Program at Tufts, Dr. Tedlock created an innovative program there in multidisciplinary research that linked the humanities to the sciences, social sciences, engineering and the arts. This program was cited by a national team of reviewers as the "most exciting multidisciplinary faculty-development program in America."

A recognized authority on the Maya, Dr. Tedlock's many research trips to the American Southwest, Mesoamerica and South America have been supported by grants and fellowships from the NEH, ACLS, the National Institutes of Health, School of American Research and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. With Dennis Tedlock, she recently served a four-year term as editor of the American Anthropologist. Her publications cover many topics: from Zuni music, aesthetics and sacred theater to Maya textiles, dream interpretation, shamanism, cosmology, astronomy, agriculture and medicine. She has published more than 60 articles based on her extensive field research. Her books include Teaching from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy (with Dennis Tedlock); Time and the Highland Maya; Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations; The Beautiful and the Dangerous: Dialogues with the Zuni Indians; and Spirits in the Blood: A scientist's Journey into Mayan Shamanism.