Melissa Darby

Melissa Darby has worked for over forty years as an archaeologist and historian in the Northwest and is a noted authority on the ethnohistory, ethnobotany, and vernacular architecture of Native groups of western Oregon and Washington. She is a research scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University. Darby's recent book Thunder Go North, the Hunt for Sir Francis Drake's Fair & Good Bay (University of Utah Press 2019) provides a critical analysis of the question of where on the North American Pacific coast Sir Francis Drake landed in 1579. Her other contributions include a chapter in Keeping it Living, Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America (University of Washington Press 2005), and papers in a range of journals including Journal of Northwest Anthropology.