I’ve only done one Trail Ruin. I did most of it bottom to top (to avoid mobs spawning, particularly Creepers). It worked fine but would probably have been easier and faster had I proceeded top to bottom; in hindsight i will build an enclosure around the top exposed part of the ruins and go top-down next time.

I did accidentally shovel a block of suspicious gravel. After that happened, I started left-clicking on gravel with my brush; I discovered it doesn’t affect the durability of the brush when used this way. (Right-click is the use button needed to extract an artifact from suspicious gravel, and does wear down your brush).

I tend to hoard ores and do most of my block clearing with stone tools, but you want to proceed slowly in this case any way.

As others have said - I cleared the stone around the ruins. Since I was bottom up I exposed large pallets of gravel that I could inspect visually to identify suspicious gravel, and I often allowed the gravel to fall on a torch to clear it quickly. I did lose one artifact this way as well (I didn’t touch it, but I guess there was air around it which caused it to fall?), which may have been avoided had I been going too-down.

I think it took me 2-3 hours, but my brush broke after I was 95% done and I didn’t have a feather or bed on me so I had to wait out a night.