Fr Claude Joseph (1892–1986), or Hippolyte Janvier as he was called in civil life, was the author of the first systematic study of the material culture of the Araucanian Mapuche (Central Chile). He was active
in the region from 1926 to 1932, but to date little has been known of the scientific context of his work. Archival research and information gleaned from his son, along with analyses of the collection of objects
and photographs he donated to the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro (today amongst the holdings of the Musée du Quai Branly) on his return to France, have made it possible to recontextualize his important ethnographic work on the Mapuche, and to shed light on two other museum collections. Claude Joseph’s work and his activity as a collector may be seen in the context of the movement of appropriation of Mapuche culture as national heritage and the wider institutionalization of anthropology that took place in Chile in the first third of the twentieth century.