I blame my wife’s favorite show “Time Team”. After watching that show it seems like every Brit can go into his back garden and dig up a prehistoric, medieval, Roman, or Viking building.
And they’ll only have three days to do it.
It's a double edged sword. Public interest in archeaology has produced support and money for legitimate exploration and excavations, preserving many sites. On the other hand, nighthawks are looking to get rich and they don't care about the historical information, only the object that ends up on eBay. Occuring world wide, especially in the Middle East.
Another Brit show worth watching is “The Dectectorists”.
I loved Time Team. I had a friend in England that put me onto the show, and connected me to a UK torrent site many years ago so that I was able to download the program every week it aired. I’ve got just about every show, and special that aired in its 20 years burned to DVD. Every so often Phil Harding shows up on newer archaeology programs, and Tony Robinson hosts various new historical series from time-to-time. Even Raksha Dave, who was one of the diggers in the old series has been hosting newer archaeology programs.