The contribution of existing sources to the dating of events: a survey in Mali's Bwa country.
"We exploited the sources of information already existing in Mali's Bwa country in order to facilitate the dating of biographical events. Their contribution was multiple: they gave an exact date for a substantial number of births (25%), they provided dating landmarks within the biographies (in two thirds of birth histories, at least one birth could thus be pinpointed), and they made it possible to construct sets of dating references at the family level (lineage calendars). Based on the same principle of chronological classification as the historical calendar, the lineage calendar improves the method by replacing public events by family events with which the respondents are more familiar (births and deaths of kin)."
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