Study your local cemeteries. For example, you might do a study that examines the changes in shapes, sizes and designs of tombstones, creating categories of standard designs and graphing the changes in the popularity of designs over the course of time. These changes could then be compared to cultural, religious or economic changes occurring during the period covered by your study. Alternatively, you might do a study of changes in segregated burial practices (if any) over this period. Either of these could be the basis for an excellent paper.
Conduct a survey in your neighborhood or on campus, asking people questions about their own ethnicity. For example, do they think of themselves as part of a singular group, several groups or do they not see themselves as a part of any group at all. This information would be less relevant in itself (since anthropologists view concepts like race as outmoded) than as a gauge of how people classify themselves. This research could be used as part of a paper on changing perceptions of ethnicity.
Examine changing life expectancy rates in rural areas over time. The information for this study could be gained from sources like country birth and death records and federal census data. Look at possible influencing factors to see if there is a statistical correlation between their appearance and a rise or drop in the average life expectancy. Some of these factors might be things like hospitals, public water supplies, pubic schools and so on. Compare the differences among social or economic groups, or look for a difference between urban and rural areas.