Archaeology, as a field, can aptly be described as one that began as a treasure hunt. People wanted the gold of the past, the great statues and marbles that stirred faint echoes of former greatness. Granted, these adventurers sometimes took painstakingly detailed drawings before they used dynamite to enter a pyramid, but not always. In fact, not usually. Archaeology is generally thought of as becoming a science when excavations were carried out with record-keeping being as much of a priority as finding treasure. The field progressed with intensive record-keeping and meticulous detail work, and went further when the  goal was no longer the glittering gold of ancient kings.
This probably sounds like the end of a romantic dream. Victorian men going out in bucket hats with the goal of finding something, really just anything of value to bring back to the Queen for the glory of their country sounds so much better than looking for pieces of pottery (a.k.a. pot sherds) to be able to accurately date a site. Aren't statues and gold better than dust and stones? Seriously, what gives?
It was slowly realized that a lot of valuable information about the past was being lost, and that many early excavations were the modern equivalent of looting, even if it was done with the permission of the governments involved (and there are times when it was not). Flinders Petrie was one of the first to demand a meticulous approach to excavation. Heinrich Schliemann was part of the note-taking revolution as well. Interestingly enough, neither man was well-liked by the scientific community at first since neither had had any formal training in the field.
Scientists really seem to be stuffy old intelligent fools stuck in their ways. And I want to be one of those? No. I do have my husband, and friends, around to bring me back to reality and knock me down a few pegs when necessary.
So why is attention to detail deemed so necessary? Why can't we just look at the temples, tomb paintings, statuary and gold relics to understand history and prehistory?
Look around your house briefly, and I will illustrate my case in point. Do you see large statues, items of gold laying around, or precious ceremonial objects? Do you see large quantities of them if you see any at all? Sure I have a few pieces of silver plate, and several antiques of small value. Most of us have a few old things. Most of us have a few valuable things. However, these are not what make up our daily lives. This analogy can be drawn to the past. Most of them did not have great status, or the luxury goods that accompanied it. It's hard to fully understand the past when you're looking only at the glitzy obvious parts. It requires more digging, literally and figuratively.
An example that brought this whole topic to mind can be found here. Careful analysis of the bones discovered in the Neolithic graves has revealed what could be the beginnings of hereditary inequality. But the story doesn't stop there. In the strontium isotope analysis of the bones of the women, it was found that theirs differed significantly from those of the men, indicating that they did not originate from that locality. This has led the researchers to believe that this group was patrilocal, or that women moved out of the family group to marry others, and that men brought women into the village to marry. Or, if not marry in the modern sense, at least to bear their children.
That is not romantic archaeology. It's science and investigative research. And it is vitally necessary to our understandings of the past. Let's just not be stuffy about it.