Augustin F.C. Holl / Gao Chang (PhD 1983, Sorbonne, Habilitation Doctorate 1994, Paris X-Nanterre) is Distinguished Professor of Anthropological Archaeology in the department of Anthropology and Ethnology, School of Sociology and Anthropology and Director of the Africa Research Center, Belt and Road Research Institute, Xiamen University.
He taught initially at the University of Paris X-Nanterre (France), and was successively professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego (USA), Curator of African Archaeology, Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Afro-American and African studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA), Professor of Prehistory and Vice-President for International Relations at the University Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense (France) and Deputy Director of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, France).
He has conducted fieldwork and extensive research in the Negev desert in Israel on Chalcolithic settlements, Mauritania in the Dhar Tichitt, Cameroon in the Houlouf region, Burkina Faso in the Mohoun Bend, directed the Sine Ngayene Archaeological Project on the Senegambian megaliths, the United States on the New York African Burial Ground, and is currently directing the “Xiamen University Saloum Delta Shell-Middens Archaeological Project” in Senegal, West Africa on “Holocene Climate Change and Cultural Adaptation”.
He has published numerous articles in a range of top peer-reviewed journals, has edited or co-edited three books, and published thirteen books including The Diwan Revisited (2000), Ancient African Metallurgy (2000, with M.S. Bisson, S.T. Childs, and P. De Barros), The Land of Houlouf (2002), Holocene Saharans (2004), Ethnoarchaeology of Shuwa-Arab Settlements (2003), Saharan Rock Art (2004), and West African Early Towns (2006), Senegambian Megaliths, Cultural Landscape and the Production of Ancestors (2017, with H. Bocoum)