In advance of proposed development ARCUS were commissioned by PPG Land Ltd, through Under Construction Archaeology Ltd, to conduct a geophysical survey over an area of land to the east of Sheepwalk Lane (Site 2), Upton, West Yorkshire. ARCUS sub-contracted the geophysical survey to Phase Site Investigations Ltd. This report was adapted from the Phase Site Investigations Ltd (2008) report by Richard ONeill (ARCUS) and Chris Swales (ARCUS). The proposed application area measures approximately 29.06 hectares in size (centred upon grid reference SE 4982 1376). The survey was carried out to attempt to help establish the presence/absence, extent, character, relationships and date (as far as circumstances and the inherent limitations of the technique permit) of archaeological features within the proposed development area. Geophysical survey indicated the presence of an essentially rural landscape of probable late prehistoric/Romano-British trackways, fields, enclosures and possible subenclosures formed by archaeological ditches. It has not been possible to reliably determine if any of the enclosures contain occupational features due to the varied background magnetism and effects of the agricultural anomalies. Several of the linear anomalies are discontinuous but it is not certain if this is due to an intermittent masking effect from ploughing, truncation of features or if some of the features are actually segmented.
Swales et al. (Tue,) studied this question.