Brian Shanahan
National Technical Lead, Digital and
Geospatial Heritage
“I’ve been immersed in archaeology and history since childhood when castles were my playground, so it’s always been deeply ingrained, the physical presence of the past. I’m lucky to have built a career working with my passion.”
Brian Shanahan has led multi-disciplinary teams on both research and development-led projects. His interests include the archaeologies of landscape and settlement, as well as the cartography of historic and cultural landscapes. Brian believes in holistic approaches to document, analyse, and communicate about the past. This can involve parsing through sixteenth-century documents written in secretary hand or working with survey, lidar, and remote sensing data to build a comprehensive picture of past land use and settlement.
Brian is particularly passionate about the potential of digital heritage for interpretation and storytelling. His early experiences of archaeology involved tracing and inking site plans and artefacts or establishing site grids with theodolites, tapes and ranging poles. Now, entire archaeological sites, buildings and landscapes can be recorded in 3D using cameras or lasers. This provides opportunities and new challenges in terms of analysing and converting massive datasets into intelligible outputs that are suitable for specialists and for engaging the public.