Have you ever lost something in your backyard? A coffee cup? A child’s toy?

Decades later, the things left behind in a backyard can tell archeologists a lot about who lived there and the image they wanted to project to the world.

That’s what Dr. William White found when he started digging up backyards in 2015 in Boise’s River Street neighborhood, an area where African Americans and immigrants were forced to live more than 100 years ago.

Dr. White is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of the forthcoming book, “Segregation Made Them Neighbors: An Archaeology of Racialization in Boise, Idaho.”

He’ll be talking about his research at Boise’s Fettuccine Forum on Oct. 6.