The Mission of the Archaeological Rescue Foundation
Archaeology is a dynamic field balancing preservation with exploration; sites are simultaneously being lost to modern pressures and being found and documented at unprecedented levels through technology, with a growing focus on digital archiving and sustainable management to safeguard history for future generations.
In 2025, the state of archaeological sites is defined by a paradox of unprecedented discovery and escalating threats. While advanced technology is revealing “lost” civilizations, environmental and human factors are placing thousands of sites at risk of permanent destruction.
The major threats include urban expansion, and uncontrolled building, whereby infrastructure projects often destroy sites of archaeological interest.
Climate change, such as rising sea levels, coastal erosion and extreme weather events directly damage or submerge sites, such as those of the prehistoric settlements in Scotland. While droughts and lower water tables, expose buried remains to oxygen and microbial decay.
Modern farming is also an issue, and is the single largest threat to many monuments, where deep ploughing and ‘arable clipping’, physically destroy subsurface remains.
An additional current major issue is that of conflict zones, and poverty-driven looting, where looting continues to strip sites of artefacts, which often end up in the illicit antiquities trade—the third-largest black market globally after drugs and arms.
However, today we are also experiencing a major digital revolution, where LiDAR, drones, Satellite imaging, and GIS for mapping and preservation have come onto the scene, revealing ongoing discoveries in Peru, Greece, and Egypt. These modern applications offer crucial insights, with efforts focusing on digital documentation, and employing advanced technology, to protect and understand these fragile historical records.
Thus, there is a global push to digitize archives using satellite imagery (e.g., Google Earth, QGIS) to identify and protect sites before they are disturbed by development.
The aim, therefore, of The Archaeological Rescue Foundation Inc. is to defend the cultural heritage of humanity wherever it may be at risk, whether the threat comes from wars, industrialization, neglect, politics, geological factors, tomb raiders or black-market operatives. Our organization will work to protect humanity’s most important monuments, artefacts, records and teachings, and ensure that this knowledge is freely available to the world.
With a particular initial focus on the Giza Plateau, we aim to recover and reveal the lost archives of early civilizations, which so many sources have reported to exist there, and work to demonstrate and rebuild the lost sciences of the ancients within the modern world and recover the histories of ages we currently refer to as ‘prehistoric’.
As a nonprofit organization, we rely on funding and contributions to continue our important work, and in the same frame, when we are able, offer funding to other likeminded organizations with similar outcomes. Only recently, we donated a small sum to ‘Gower Unearthed’ CIC, to assist them to complete their magnometer and earth resistivity survey on a medieval chapel on the Gower Peninsula, South West Wales UK, with very positive results. It is hoped that, by receiving and accepting further donations, we will be in the position to assist similar organizations.