Metal Artefacts "Rotting in the ground"?

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There is an interesting post (1st March) on the Facebook page, "People against Spike TV's "American Digger" on the issue of the excuse artefact hunters frequently make that the metal objects they hoik out of archaeological contexts to add to their collections would otherwise be "rotting in the ground". In fact metal objects placed in the ground will of course begin to corrode rapidly but after the initial stages of this, they reach an equilibrium with the surrounding conditions and reach a point where their condition is stable - that is why they survive to our times. Once removed from that stable burial environment by being dug out of the ground and placed in another environment, the deterioration process begins again - quite often now catastrophically ("bronze disease"). Here's a post and video showing what artefact hunters are almost certainly NOT doing to the many unstable metal finds they remove from their burial environments:

These are the types of artifacts that might be found on the two "Digger" shows (Spike's show and Nat Geo's show). These items do not "rot in the ground unless they're found," but they DO start to deteriorate if they are not properly conserved. Archeologists do not work by themselves, they work with conservators, curators, and historians.... to name a few specialists. There have been questions about what happens to artifacts, both in the ground/undiscovered and what happens once they are discovered.

This video demonstrates what happens when iron objects are recovered from the 400 year old James Fort site at Jamestown, Virginia. Senior Conservator Michael Lavin takes us on a tour through the lab to demonstrate the conservation practices he uses when working with iron artifacts.