Must be the sarsaparilla

You have to read a full four paragraphs into this article to see how the bits of refuse mentioned at the start of the story relate to a free-black household in Boston of the early 1800s. It seems to me that the trash of free blacks ("shoes, doll fragments, hat pins, children's marbles and an empty sarsaparilla bottle") was much the same as that of free whites 200 years ago. In 200 years will we be excavating tract housing and distinguishing previous residents by their race based on cans of Dr Pepper or blond Barbies?