Runescape Dev Tracker
This thread was added on April 14, 2020, with posts from JagexRyan.
In fact this is entirely redundant, and I suspect the bugfix has been misunderstood. The player is still stopped excavating when the popup appears not when it is dismissed.
It's actually impossible to excavate with that popup in place, because clicking anywhere closes it, so this fix does nothing.
Better luck next week?
It is intentional that you are stopped when you discover an artefact.
Prior to this update, if you were to press esc the popup would close and you would continue to excavate. However, this was not the case if you were to press spacebar. The fix that this patch note relates to is that pressing spacebar will now do the same thing.