Introduction: Neighborhoods and districts in ancient Mesoamerica

All cities known to social scientists and historians have neighborhoods. People living in urban settings universally organize important aspects of their lives on a spatial scale that is intermediate between the household and the city. Urban authorities also tend to organize administrative activities such as tax collection and record keeping on a similar scale. The spatial relationship between these latter units, which Smith (2010) has called districts, and neighborhoods proper, varies among cities and time periods. Given the universality of neighborhoods and districts, it is not surprising that these were important spatial and social units in the cities of ancient Mesoamerica.