Just another anecdote on the difficulties of seeing ethnicity in the
ground.  Working at a Dam construction camp in Arizona, the contracting
archaeologists (Dames & Moore) recorded a short-term occupation for which
detailed census data was available.  The residents included 40% Mexican
or Mexican-Americans, 28% Apache, and a few immigrants.  Whites
born in the U.S. made up only 32% of the population.  The only artifacts
in the town dump that were "ethnically marked" were a Chines ceramic food
jar, three chili cans, and two chili powder bottles.  Given the site's
location in Arizona, the chili cans and chili powder are themselves
questionable as "ethnic markers".
 
That ethnicity is hard to see in the ground goes beyond a theoretical
problem, especially for those of us doing cultural resources management.  In
Colorado and any state that uses the IMACs (Utah, Wyoming, Nevada), all
sites need to be assigned an ethnic affiliation.  (This is probably true
elsewhere, but this is where I have worked.)  The assumption is
made that without discrete and implicit ethnic markers, a site is the
remains of Anglo-americans.  As historical archaeologists, we should know
this to be a spurious assumption.  In the West, especially, it does a
great disservice to the historic record to assume Anglo-american
affiliation as the default.  In so doing we erase difference in the
historic record just as historians of old.  For my part, I record
cultural affiliation as "unknown" for sites lacking historic records or
clearly marked material culture.
 
Yet another cautionary tale...
 
Bonnie Clark
Historical Archaeologist
SWCA, Inc.
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