Career
She was a student of Marcel Mauss and wrote on a large range of ethnographic topics and made pioneering contributions to the study of myths, initiations, techniques (particularly "descriptive ethnography"), graphic systems, objects, classifications, ritual and social structure. She is most noted for her work among the Dogon and the Bambara of Mali, having lived with them for over twenty years, often in collaboration with noted French anthropologist Marcel Griaule (1898-1956). Because each episode of the rite is enacted only once every sixty years, Dieterlen"s documentation of the sigui cycle allowed the Dogon themselves to see and interpret the entire sequence of rites which they had heretofore only observed in part.
Dieterlen began her ethnographic research in Bandiagara, Mali in 1941.
Perhaps most controversially, Dieterlen was criticized by her peers for her publications with Griaule on Dogon astronomy, which professed an ancient knowledge of the existence of a dwarf white star, Sirius B also called the Dog Star, invisible to the naked eye. This ancient indigenous knowledge (the Nommo) and the supposition that extraterrestrials might have been in contact with the Dogon was popularized by Robert K. G. Temple in his book The Sirius Mystery (1976) and Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1995).
He accuses Griaule of misinterpreting and influencing results. In addition, skeptic and space journalist, James Oberg in his investigation of the Dogon mystery, found no substantial evidence that would indicate outside influence, and sees such proposed scenarios as being "entirely circumstantial".
An "hommage" collection published in 1978 (Systèmes de signes: Textes réunis en hommage à Germaine Dieterlen) included essays by Meyer Fortes and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Dieterlen also worked with other noted ethnographic filmmakers like Griaule. Mary Douglas reviewed the contributions made by Dieterlen to French anthropology in Dogon Culture - Profane and Arcane (1968) and If the Dogon.. (1975).