This is a presentation recorded at the 2023 joint conference of the Society for Economic Botany and Society of Ethnobiology, held at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia from June 4-9, 2023.

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Ethnobiological excursions and data sources, 1980-2023
William Balée, Distinguished Ethnobiologist Lecture

Sources of my thinking in distinct though related epistemological venues—social science and traditional knowledge (TK)—are examined. Ethnobiological excursions into new methodologies that reference approaches to study of and theorizing about people and landscapes in lowland South America are discussed. Data sources that have included personal acquaintance with linguists, anthropologists, and biologists on the one hand, and Indigenous persons of diverse ethnicities who possess the common thread that they are forest peoples and speak languages affiliated with the Tupi family, on the other, are reviewed. I revisit how received wisdom concerning lowland South American adaptations has increasingly been replaced by ethnobiological findings. These findings are further driven by a research program that posits archaeological and historical societies as agents of transmission of knowledge and behavior involved in landscape transformations.