How bad is mid-high level Archaeology grind?

To preface, I’m 74 arch now, and I’m working to make it to 86. I kind of overleveled with quest turn in rewards, and some TH keys, I’ve full cleared up to sentisten and I’m working on only doing collections

I only ever did collections through velucia but after learning how many powers I missed I backtracked through all of them, I have the first rank qualifications and I’m working on the second (associate)

It feels like such a slog, I have a dragon mattock and the stadium debris for Sara 2 collection and everything in sentisten felt like it took almost 10 minutes for one artifact and half the time I got dupes

Does leveling start to get faster when i make it to the level 70 excavations? I was barely 68 arch a few days ago and I’ve been fully committing all my time to make it to 86 but it’s such a slog