Griaule, Marcel (1898–1956)
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French anthropologist and africanist, student of Paul Rivet. Did fieldwork first in Abyssinia (Ethiopia), later in a series of West-African countries (Mali, Cameroon, Senegal, Niger). Griaule led the great French Dakar-Djibuti expedition (1931-33), he was a pioneer of modern fieldwork methods in French anthropology, and an inspiration for the growth of the tradition of visual anthropology. He started the large, collective French research project on the Dogon people (Mali), which his research group documented continuously over a period of some 25 years. After many years of work, the researchers contacted an old man, who recounted the full cosmology of the Dogon. This was in part published by Griaule, in part, after his death, by his colleague and main collaborator, Germain Dieterlen.


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