2025 Annual MAS Conference

You're invited to our FREE MAS Annual Conference at the Barbey Maritime Center (Columbia River Maritime Museum) in Astoria on April 5th, from 1 PM - 4 PM!

Join us for an exciting afternoon featuring guest speakers, the latest MAS updates, networking opportunities, and more.

Meet our speakers! Scott Williams will be speaking about the Beeswax Shipwreck and Melissa Darby will be speaking about Sir Francis Drake in the PNW.

Scott Williams

Scott is the co-founder of MAS, former MAS executive director, and a professional archaeologist with over thirty-five years of experience in government and private sector cultural resources management in the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Basin. Scott is an experienced Program Manager with a demonstrated history of working in historic preservation and the management of cultural resources. Scott is a subject matter expert on the Beeswax Shipwreck.

Melissa Darby

Melissa Darby holds her Master of Arts degree in Anthropology (PSU 1996), Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology, History, and a Middle East Studies Certificate (PSU 1980). Darby is a leading authority on the Native American use of Sagittaria latifolia, an edible root which is commonly known as wapato. Darby is a cultural resource management consultant and has worked for over forty years as an archaeologist and historian in Oregon and Washington. Her research on Native American cultures of the region include important works on settlement patterns, vernacular architecture, and plant foods used by indigenous people of the region. She has contributed substantially to our understanding of the Native peoples and the world they inhabited prior to European incursion. The University of Utah Press published her book Thunder Go North, the Hunt for Sir Francis Drake’s Fair & Good Bay in 2019. This study chronicles the long-standing controversy over where Drake and company in the Golden Hind landed and spent most of the summer of 1579. This work also exposes the intrigues of some of the California booster groups and historians employed to obscure the facts of Drake’s voyage on the west coast of America.

For any questions please reach out to: maritimearchaeological@gmail.com