[1] 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, Crowfoot 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.

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.

Charles Trollope Swan, rector of Welton le Wold, Lincolnshire, Grace Mary Hood was the oldest of six children, two girls and four boys.

William Frankland Hood,[6] collected Egyptian antiquities, which were displayed in a wing added for the purpose to the main building of Nettleham Hall.

Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth offered Hood a place at her newly founded women's college in Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall.

[6] 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.

[15] In 1921, Molly attended a dinner party with the British Governor-General Sir Lee Stack where she spoke loudly and insistently about FGM, a custom that officials might never learn about during their three-year service in the country.

To head the school Crowfoot summoned two fellow pupils from her Clapham days, the midwife sisters "Bee" and "Gee" (Beatrice and Mabel) Wolff.

[17] Following the birth of their fourth daughter Diana and the end of World War I she and her husband John returned for some months to England, where they were re-united with their three older girls and took a lease on a house in Geldeston, Norfolk.

Molly Crowfoot was in charge of living and feeding arrangements on site for large, mixed groups that contained archaeologists from the UK, Palestine and US universities.

She remained actively involved in her retirement and, as well as being a regular churchgoer, served as wartime secretary of the new Village Produce Association (see "Digging for Victory"), and post-war chairwoman of its Labour Party.

An outright ban would merely drive the practise underground, she believed, and undo over two decades of careful work by the Midwives' School to reduce its incidence and harmful effects among Sudanese women.

As doyenne of the study of ancient Middle-Eastern textiles, Molly was invited in 1949 to examine the linen wrappers of the Dead Sea Scrolls.