Marcel Griaule (1898-1965) was a French anthropologist known for his studies with the Dogon of West Africa and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France.
Griaule was born in Ainsy-sur-Armençon in 1898 and received a good education. He was prepared to become an engineer and was enrolled at the presitguous Lycee Louis-le-Grand when he volunteered to become a pilot in the French airforce in 1917. In 1920 he returned to university, where he attended the lectures of Marcel Mauss and Marcel Cohen . Intrigued by anthropology, he gave up plans for a technical career. In 1927 he received a degree from the Ecole Nationale de Langues Orientales, where he concentrated on Amharic and Gueze .
Between 1928 and 1933 Giraule participated in two large-scale ethnographic expeditions -- one to Ethiopia and the ambitious Dakar to Djibouti expedition which crossed Africa. It was on this latter expedition that he first visited the Dogon, the ethnic group with whom he would be closely associated for the rest of his career. In 1933 he received a diploma from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in religion.
Throughout the 1930s Griaule and his student Germaine Dieterlin undertook several group expeditions where their work on the Dogon continued. It was during these trips that Griaule pioneered the use of aerial photography, surveying, and team work to study other cultures. In 1938 Griaule produced his dissertation and was awarded a doctorate based on his Dogon material.
With the outbreak of World War II Griaule was drafted to return to the French airforce and after the war he served as the inaugural professor of the first chair of anthropology at the University of Paris. He died in 1956.
Griaule is remembered for the very personal accounts he wrote of his relationships with his research subjects, particularly the blind hunter Ogotemmeli . He was also known for his elaborate exegeses of Dogon myth and ritual. Today, some anthropologists are highly critical of his work and argue that his elaborate accounts of cosmic eggs and mystic vibrations do not accurately reflect Dogon belief.