Editorial

See PDF] Long COVID In the novel Cold earth a group of archaeologists on fieldwork in a remote part of Greenland find themselves isolated after a global pandemic severs communications with the wider world 1 At first, the lack of news allows the team to focus on their excavation of a Norse settlement In the real world, the current pandemic may have caught a small number of archaeologists in isolated locations, but for most of us—as for the wider population—the experience of a global virus outbreak has been the exact opposite of that of the novel's protagonists: we have been socially and physically isolated at home with an excess of news flooding in from all around the world The COVID decade: understanding the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19 identifies a series of psychological, social, cultural, economic and political consequences of the spread of the virus that will define the decade to come 2 Many of these issues are familiar from pre-pandemic times: mental health, loneliness and the need for better skills and training, social care and community cohesion [ ]the Continuing Bonds project uses archaeological case studies as the basis for workshops with end-of-life care professionals to explore contemporary attitudes to death and to facilitate discussion with patients and families around dying and bereavement 4 Meanwhile, a number of museums and heritage sites, such as the Beamish Living Museum of the North, located in northern England, have developed dementia-friendly programmes, using their collections to enable people living with the condition to visit with confidence and to improve physical and mental health