Unless it can be demonstrated that each has a separate purpose only one should be used. This once again leads to greater laboratory cost efficiency, simpler techniques, and less clutter for additional work place safety. Treatments may also be delayed because some individual artifacts pose incredibly difficult conservation dilemmas. The result in both cases is usually indefinite storage. Even placed under ideal storage conditions accumulated artifacts can begin rapid decomposition.
Artifacts often survive for centuries on the sea bottom better than a few years in storage.
It is the conservator's duty to process artifacts in a timely manner. If this cannot be done overall project research design and methodology should be changed. A laboratory, even fitted with the finest equipment, is only as good as its conservator and no conservator has done and seen everything. The best conservators know when an artifact's conservation is beyond their experience or the accumulated experience of their research library. Often they will network with other conservators to find a solution or send an artifact to a more specialized laboratory.