Apparently it resets mantid locations, lorewalker vendor sells the stones for a day.
Fwiw, it will work if your archaeology is high enough to farm pandaren arch for restored artefacts.
as an effect, it also resets any spawn location of an archaeology site if you cross between CRZ and regular zone crossover(s). It may be patched for 5.3 to work differently, ie only in pandaland.
The official response is, it's working as intended.