John Bates Site (44YO205)
Site History
The John Bates site (44YO205) is a colonial Quaker site with 17th- and 18th-century components. The site, located in the Skimino Hills subdivision in York County, Virginia, is documented as having been owned at the beginning of the 18th century by John Bates, a wealthy Quaker planter and merchant. Bates was known to have operated a store at his Skimino Plantation and an inventory was taken of the store goods at his death in 1720. Some of the archaeological components located on the site appear to date to his ownership of the property.
Archaeological Investigations
Archaeological salvage work conducted in 1980 at the site by the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology located a structure with a brick foundation and several other colonial-period features. During the summer of 1985, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Department of Archaeological Research conducted some work at the site in conjunction with the College of William and Mary History Graduate Program.
The 1985 excavation further explored the structure discovered in 1980, which contained a brick-paved cellar that appeared to have been destroyed by fire during the third quarter of the 18th century. Also discovered was an early 18th-century refuse deposit, containing a large assemblage of domestic artifacts. Despite documentation of the store's contents in 1720, no detailed information on ceramics was included in that list; a recurring problem archaeologists face when working with store and probate inventories. The trash deposit artifact assemblage was most likely associated with Bates' store and provides an excellent opportunity to study an early 18th-century merchant and the range of ceramics available to the area's residents at the time.
References
1990 The Bates Site: Investigation of a Quaker Merchant. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg.
Associated Artifacts
Rhenish Stoneware
