david webster is the archaeologist who excavated much of the noble's house. this man probably had about 200 to 300 people who were dependent on him in some way, including his wives, his brothers, his political retainers, his economic specialists, living in this patio group and the other patio groups. they're buried here. there are about 250 or 300 burials here. which are the people who were his dependents. and essentially what this is is an elaborate household. keach: the maya noble could support his household because he controlled the rich farmland surrounding the compound. the land was so fertile it could produce a surplus which fed the noble's dependents, including specialists like the artisan, who were not themselves farmers. this was the basis of the economic system of the elites in ancient copan. for the noble, the system worked well. the more dependents he controlled, the more powerful he appeared. but the system also created a problem. what was he to do with such a large family of elites ? i suspect that one of the things is what do you do with these

archaeologist david webster. webster: suppose i came into this stadium a week, or even a century, after all the people left. how would i figure out what happened here ? what this arena was used for ? this is the dilemma facing archaeologists. symbols are of fundamental importance in understanding any human culture because they're so laden with meaning. but they're not very durable, and even if we find them, often we can't decode them. in this case, though, i'm in luck because of this -- writing. writing is a set of graphic symbols that is directly or indirectly related to language. keach: we use writing to convey very specific information, from introducing team members to explaining the referee's hand signals. this detailed guide brings the stadium to life. but archaeology is never this simple. archaeologists rarely find program notes to ancient societies. if writing exists in a society, it usually serves very specific purposes. and like any other kind of symbolic system, it has to be decoded and deciphered. in f