Grace Mary Crowfoot

Grace Mary Crowfoot (née Hood) (1879–1957) was a pioneer in the study of archaeological textiles. During a long and active life Molly—as she was always known to friends, family and close colleagues—worked on a wide variety of textiles from North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the British Isles. Returning to England in the mid-1930s after more than three decades spent in Egypt, Sudan and Palestine, Molly co-authored a 1942 article on the "Tunic of Tutankhamun" and published short reports about textiles from the nearby Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo (1951-1952) in Suffolk.

Molly trained a generation of textile archaeologists in Britain, among them Audrey Henshall and her own daughter Elisabeth, and developed close contacts with textile archaeologists in Scandinavia such as Margrethe Hald, Marta Hoffman and Agnes Geijer. Together they established a new field of study, ensuring that textile remnants found at any site were henceforth preserved for analysis, instead of being cleaned from the metal and other objects to which they remained attached.

After her death obituaries were published by the archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon and her son-in-law, the Africanist Thomas Hodgkin.

Born in Lincolnshire, England, in 1879 into a family of the minor landed gentry Grace Mary Hood was the oldest of 6 children—two girls and four boys.

Her grandfather collected Egyptian antiquities, which were displayed in a wing added for the purpose to the main building of Nettleham Hall. The family interests put her in contact with many archaeologists, among them William Flinders Petrie, and she became lifelong friends with Petrie's wife Hilda.

Molly's earliest venture into archaeology was in 1908-1909 when she excavated the prehistoric remains in the cave at Tana Bertrand, above San Remo on the Italian Riviera where her family often stayed. She found 300 beads and signs of early occupation. The work would not be published until 1926.

In 1908, determined to make a useful contribution to society, Molly trained to become a professional midwife at Clapham Maternity Hospital in London. The contacts made then proved invaluable later when she was living in the Sudan.

...
Wikipedia