sanders: before we srted the copan project, we knew a great deal about copan.and its history was very similar to that of many classic maya sites. there was a long period of population growth, of political evolution, peaking around 800 a.d., and then the dynastic sequence ends shortly afterwards. and within a short period, the valley seems to have been abandoned. what we didn't know was anything about the factors and the mechanisms and the processes that produced this peculiar population history. and what we decided to do was a series of excavations and surveys which would allow us to find out how big the population was, how it was distributed on the landscape, how those people made a living off of this landscape, what the various social classes and social groupings were, and finally, hopefully, to get enough chronological information to find out how long this whole process of fluorescence and decline required. keach: their goal was nothing less than the recreation of the entire society of ancient copan. to understand what life had been like for the vast majorit

keach: the copan valley lies 100 kilometers north of ceren. archaeologists began a complete survey of the valley on foot. after 10 years of painstaking work, they have discovered the remains of 4,500 structures. más a usted... cinco centímetros. keach: archaeologist william sanders has been leading excavations in the copan valley since 1980. sanders: we decided to do a series of large-scale excavations out in the countryside to get an idea what the farming population was like. what kind of houses did they live in ? what was their lifestyle like ? probably 80% of the population of copan was in that social category. keach: unlike ceren, the ancient houses of copan had been exposed to centuries of erosion. very few artifacts remained intact or in their original location. still the team finds significant clues. in one structure, the team discovers a razed platform of stone, the remnants of a sleeping bench. in another, they find evidence for a kitchen -- shattered obsidian blades that once were knives and broken pieces of pottery that were once us

the copan valley, several miles wide, is watered by the copan river. today the fertile bottom lands near the ancient palaces of the elite lords are owned by a few wealthy families. on the hillsides, peasants try to eek out a living on inferior land. the archaeologists speculate that this same pattern would have existed in ancient times. by surveying the hillsides, they have discovered the homes of the ancient maya commoners. 3 meters and 80 centimeters. let's get it on the map. by mapping each house site, they create a picture of maya settlement. over two-thirds of the population, mostly commoners, lived in the hills far from the acropolis on the compounds of the elite who controlled the best lands. to confirm that the ancient residents of the hillsides were farmers, archaeologists employ new scientific tools. using samples of mud from a hillside swamp, a picture can be taken of agriculture thousands of year ago. each of these microscopic flecks of pollen contains clues to their identity -- a characteristic shape for each variety of plant. the pollen r