I think your putting to much into what the intentions of what archeology and for example fishing are supposed to be . They wanted people to have something to do besides site in stormwind or org AFK ...so all these side profs are just meant to give you something simple and stress free to do while you wait for your raid ,dungeons,arena or BG ...and really that's all it should be . The reason I say that is because you don't want to get caught up in something you can't get away from while you are waiting ..which is why these profs are perfect ...yeah they could be more interesting but for example having random combat in archeology does not work for me because my dungeon or Arena my pop and I don't want to be stuck in combat and miss out ...etc etc