He conducted extensive field work on pre-Columbian Maya civilization sites, and published numerous works on the subject.
Coe's academic career was spent in association with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied and later taught as professor in anthropology.
[1] Coe was responsible for coordinating much of the site's restoration work and compiling the documentation of the field seasons reports.
His brother was fellow Mayanist Michael D. Coe, with whom he had a falling-out in the early 1960s.
Michael once left him in a deep excavation trench in Belize,[clarification needed] where William examined some potsherds and wondered why they had been placed so deliberately, leading to his long fascination with context and formation processes.