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PAST and Its
Mission
PAST started as a non-profit organization in 2000 founded
by an international Board of Trustees who have devoted volumes of time
to seeing that the mission of PAST is achievable. Working with the Board
of Trustees are professionals from around the world. Added to our trustees
and volunteer staff are a handful of research associates – the everyday
archaeologists and research scientists who join with PAST to take their
work to the public.
 Founded
to promote partnerships between anthropologists and educators, PAST
successfully initiated and implemented projects throughout the United
States and has proposed projects that will take it into the
international arena. During its first four years of operation, the
foundation created programs in several media that reached millions of
Americans and successfully brought history to living rooms and
classrooms across the country. PAST partnered with the History Channel
on three separate projects representing the diverse maritime world from
the royal yacht of King Kamehameha II to the mysterious German U-boat
U-166 of World War II. These documentaries were shown on the series
Deep Sea Detectives. Working with archaeologists and educators in
Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming, PAST produced curricula that brings history
alive in the classroom and is available to teachers across the nation at
no charge. Due to these initial efforts in which PAST filled a
much-needed niche, the foundation was bestowed two coveted John L.
Cotter Awards: the first in 2003 for Excellence in National Park Service
Archaeology, and again in 2004, when PAST Executive Director and
creative force Annalies Corbin was awarded the Cotter Historical
Archaeology Award by the International Society for Historic Archaeology.
Currently PAST is working on projects in California with
the state parks system there on a Gold Rush Era shipwreck, in the Gulf
of Mexico with the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) on deep sea
shipwrecks and in the Missouri River with the U.S. National Park
Service. From these projects PAST plans to promote new curricula and
programs that will be available through the foundation’s website, linked
to the websites of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
the Minerals Management Service and the National Park Service.
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