https://hyperallergic.com/470795/pseudoarchaeology-and-the-racism-behind-ancient-aliens/

Pseudoarchaeology has a pretty long and not-so-awesome background due to the profession's colonial roots with treasure hunters, adventurers, and the like, especially in antiquarian circles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_archaeology

In the late 18th to 19th century archaeology became a national endeavor as personal cabinets of curios turned into national museums. People were now being hired to go out and collect artifacts to make a nation's collection more grand and to show how far a nation's reach extends. For example, Giovanni Battista Belzoni was hired by Henry Salt, the British consul to Egypt, to gather antiquities for Britain. In nineteenth-century Mexico, the expansion of the National Museum of Anthropology and the excavation of major archaeological ruins by Leopoldo Batres were part of the liberal regime of Porfirio Díaz to create a glorious image of Mexico's pre-Hispanic past.[22]