Mary A

“They have been remembered as the wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of powerful men, not as autonomous individuals and active leaders with their own political agency.”
― Katherine Pangonis, Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule

“Amid ancient surfaces densely spangled by myriad artefacts, fireplaces are like archaeological wormholes, bridging the impossible chasms of time separating us from long-vanished dwellers. ”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

“In eighteenth-century France, when someone died in a village, a message would be sent to the bell-ringer. The change ringing that followed would give the age and sex of the deceased, so that you truly knew ‘for whom the bell tolled’.”
― Brandy Schillace, Death's Summer Coat

“Let’s finish our shared journey through these pages by letting your guard down. Push against the impossible, and perform a quantum shift back in time to the Pleistocene. Close your eyes and pick a world: a grassy plain under cool winter sun; a warm forest track, soft loam underfoot; or a now-sunken rocky coast, gulls’ cries salting the air. Now listen, step forward, she’s here […]Neanderthal. Human. Kindred.”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art