Anthropologist : Jean Paul Colleyn (EHESS)
Field assistant : Mengoro Sanogo, Adaman Coulibaly
The merchant cities of the Sahel had established permanent contacts with the desert towns around the salt marshes. These depended for their livelihood on the food and goods from the Savannah area. From the 8th century onwards, with the arrival of Islam and writing, a scholarly tradition, and a system for legislating and administrating spread all over the country, and resulted in the creation of new ways of governing.
