Episode
Jan Francke: Scanning the Ancient World, with Ground Penetrating Radar
- Podcast
- Earth Ancients
- Published
- Aug 15, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 5491
- Processing state
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Summary
Jan Francke: Scanning the Ancient World, with Ground Penetrating Radar What lies beneath some of the world's most mysterious ancient sites?Dr. Jan Francke has spent more than three decades working with ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and developing technologies capable of imaging structures, geological formations, tunnels, voids, and other features hidden beneath the Earth's surface.In this episode of Earth Ancients, Jan joins Cliff Dunning to discuss the science behind GPR and its growing role in archaeology. The conversation explores radar investigations at ancient sites, including work around the Giza Plateau and Great Pyramid, as well as projects in Mexico, the Middle East, Australia, and other parts of the world. Jan also explains an important problem surrounding ground-penetrating radar: while GPR can produce remarkable results under the right conditions, the technology can easily be misunderstood, misused, or overinterpreted. What can radar actually see underground? How deep can it penetrate? What creates an anomaly? And when does an intriguing radar image become credible evidence for a buried structure?Jan Francke is the founder of Groundradar, which develops and deploys specialized GPR systems, including long-range UltraGPR technology. He is also associated with Geolitix, a cloud-based platform for processing and interpreting GPR and other geophysical data. His career has taken him to more than 100 countries, applying geophysical technology to archaeology, geology, mineral exploration, underground void detection, and other subsurface investigations.This conversation offers a rare look at the technology increasingly being used to investigate what may remain hidden beneath some of the world's most important ancient landscapes.Learn more about Jan Francke and Grou…