He also held positions at Boston University, Iowa State, Berkeley, Brooklyn College, Wesleyan (Connecticut), the New School for Social Research, Yale, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and Campinas (Brazil). Recently he spent an academic year in Washington, where he held a fellowship in Precolumbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks to work on the translation of a Maya play called Man of Rabinal or "Dance of the Trumpet."

He has done field studies among the Koasati of Louisiana, the Zuni of New Mexico and the Maya of Guatemala and Belize. As a field researcher he started out in archaeology, working at Anasazi sites in New Mexico and Utah.

Support for Dr. Tedlock's work has come from Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His books include Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry of the Zuni Indians; Teachings from the American Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy ( with Barbara Tedlock), The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation; Days from a Dream Almanac, The Dialogic Emergence of Culture (with Bruce Mannheim), and Breath on the Mirror: Mythic Voices and Visions of the Living Maya.

His articles have appeared in numerous journals and literary magazines, not only in the U.S. but also in Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Italy, Germany, and Japan. He received support from NEA and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for the publication of Alcheriga/Ethnopetics the first magazine of the world's tribal poetries, which featured disk recordings.

With Barbara Tedlock, he edited the American Anthropologist for a four-year term.

In 1986 Dr. Tedlock won the Elsie Clews Parsons Prize and the PEN Translation Prize for Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. His version of this ancient work is the first to unlock its full astronomical meaning, which encompasses not only the sun and moon but all the visible planets and various constellations as well.