Summer Field Camps for Adults across the USA

PAST Foundation:
PAST is a non-profit educational and research team that puts together partnerships on compelling projects in Anthropology and makes the work available to students and the public through field schools, documentary film and interactive web access. Based in Columbus, Ohio, 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. Together we pride ourselves on offering Summer Study Programs covering topics such as Cultural Landscapes; Cave Ecology; Urban Gardening & Distribution; Shipwrecks and Maritime Archaeology; Marine Ecosystems; Forensic Anthropology.

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.

Summer School Programs with Field Study covering topics such as Cultural Landscapes; Cave Ecology; Urban Gardening & Distribution; Shipwrecks and Maritime Archaeology; Marine Ecosystems; Forensic Anthropology.