They coulve easily made it so much more interesting. Like Indiana jones level. Do some small farming to find some bones, combine it with some gems/bones found from dungeon to give life to some [Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher] kind of mount. Or any other item…
As stated in my own thread, they should at least let us collect all the archaelology fragments in our bags like the mats from the primary professions instead of loading them directly into the journal - it would be much better for our alts if they could be traded on the AH or mailed to the main!
Not making the current Recruit a Friend rewards part of some great archaeology meta was a seriously missed opportunity in my opinion. The profession needs more stuff to make it interesting. Curator achievements are pretty lame, especially since no one can see your collection but yourself (except the WoD one if you visit a friend’s garrison), and a few pets and low ilvl trinkets aren’t really a good incentive to do archaeology either.