Collecting and Curating COVID-19 Heritage: Challenges of Conservation and Management

The COVID-19 pandemic raises questions about curation, collecting, and the ethics of documenting a traumatic event as it occurs in real time. Such concerns became clear as the co-authors embarked on a multi-sited study of the pandemic’s impact on four communities in two different countries. Defining an ‘artefact’ or what is archaeological, for instance, became a complicated exercise; do chalk artworks on the sidewalk, painted rocks lining a neighbourhood trail, posters stapled on community billboards, and stuffed animals in someone’s window count as archaeological artefacts? Determining the temporal boundaries of the pandemic is also difficult; while it is fairly clear when the pandemic first began, it continues to have an impact on our post-lockdown world. Its global impact also means that the material changes and landscape alterations the co-authors witnessed were not confined or isolated to one place and one time, but rather exist in multitudes across the globe.