The hot, dirty and exacting conditions of fieldwork can be a love-it-or-hate-it proposition for archaeologists and anthropologists.

"I definitely love it -- this is my first experience with field training," said Shannon Connolly, a junior anthropology major at Kansas State University, as she sifted material through a wire mesh screen at a 300-year-old Seneca Indian village site in Geneva, N.Y.

Connolly was one of two undergraduates, along with two first-year Ph.D. students, taking Field Course in Iroquois Archaeology, a summer course at Cornell.

"The main purpose of the three-week course is to teach proper excavation techniques," said Kurt Jordan, assistant professor of anthropology at Cornell and an archaeologist who also teaches in Cornell's American Indian Program (AIP). "The undergraduate students are getting a taste of what field work is all about."

American Indian student Christian DeHoyos of Chino Hills, Calif., read about the course in the AIP newsletter online and earned an AIP scholarship to attend.

"You start seeing certain patterns, depending on the density of a certain material," says DeHoyos, an entering freshman at the University of California-Santa Barbara.

Jordan supervised the dig at White Springs Winery's vineyard in Geneva. The five-acre site was occupied by 1,000 to 2,000 Senecas from about 1688 to 1715. The dig has turned up numerous glass beads, small pieces of brass, slag from metalworking, ceramic pipe stems and processed seeds and bones. Cleaning the material is an even longer process than the dig itself, Jordan said.

"There's a very rich Indian history in this area that's relatively obscure to the casual observer," he said. "What's great about this site is this hasn't been touched in 300 years. You've got direct evidence in one space of diet, living and material practices. We're trying to figure out if this will warrant a sustained archaeological investigation."

The undergraduates and Jordan sifted material from the dig with volunteer Keelin Martinek, a visiting high school senior from Detroit. Meanwhile, Beth Ryan '03, a Cornell graduate student in anthropology, and Adam Dewbury '04, a graduate student in archaeology at Binghamton University, focused on a 1-by-2-meter excavation that contained remnants of a Seneca fire pit.

"In this particular feature we've found a lot of intact bones," said Dewbury, a faunal specialist. "I will likely be able to tell exactly which species they came from. This information can allow us to get at subsistence practices, information that you can't get from other artifacts like beads and pipe stems."

Dewbury said the bones will be analyzed at the Archaeological Analytical Research Facility at Binghamton. While the animal bones were prized finds, Jordan was careful to point out they had no intention of disturbing a Seneca burial ground if one exists at the site.

"We've been in contact with representatives of the Seneca nation to talk about our methods, and what to do in the event we inadvertently discover human remains," Jordan said.

The students will document, analyze and write about their findings and what they can tell about the village and its people.

"I'm primarily interested in post-Revolutionary Iroquois culture, and the settlement patterns and material use patterns at the sites," Ryan said, while she drew a detailed site plan of the fire pit excavation. "As a buildup of what happened up to the end of the [17th] century, it's good background for my research."

About 500 Senecas occupied a nearby village, known as Kanadesaga, from circa 1754-1779 on what is now Cornell property near the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, Jordan said.

"From a long-term research perspective, I want to get some kind of idea of daily life in each of these communities," he said.