physical anthropologist rebecca storey. compounds that have been excavated, there has always been a central courtyard. and in the middle of it, we generally find some kind of architectural feature. now, in this particular compound, it's a very elaborate and very beautiful one -- look at the detailing on the stone, and also look at the little ornaments on top of it. there are fragments that shows that it once was plastered and painted. so we have to remember that it would have been completely brighter and much more colorful, and really looked splendid. keach: these strange and splendid structures were altars. but who was being worshiped here ? in 1980, rebecca storey and dolph widmer excavated a residential compound in a neighborhood of the city now called tlajinga. the evidence showed people had lived in the compound for close to 500 years. underneath the central altar, archaeologists discovered several skeletons, buried decades apart. storey: when we excavated under the central courtyards of tlajinga, we found a series of