When is a ditch a gully?

[LBK]

Quick question. When does a ditch become small enough to be classed as a gully?

[pictish]

Should that not be the other way round. Ditches are smaller and man made, a gully is larger and natural.

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Quick question. When does a ditch become small enough to be classed as a gully?

Usually, anything bigger than a rut is a gully, larger than that, it's a ditch! if that helps.

[pictish]

Usually, anything bigger than a rut is a gully, larger than that, it's a ditch! if that helps.

I am a bit confused as well now, below is taken from a dig report and I have seen others where features have been labelled gullies but were bigger and deeper than ditches named in the same report. In the scottish reports I have read gullies are natural geographic features or those features extended by man and ditches are manmade. In other reports they call them gully/ditch and dont classify them as 2 different things.



A southwest-northeast aligned ditch (G703) almost completely traversed Area 7, terminating
2.5m from the eastern edge of the area (Fig. 3) and may have been utilised as a boundary
feature, enclosure or field system. The ditch, which cut the northern edge of posthole 7085,
had a minimum length of 19m, a width of 0.5m and average depth of 0.25m. The fill produced
a total of 11 Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age sherds of Peterborough Ware and Grooved
Ware/Beaker. To the south of G703 were two gullies (7037 and 7049) on a northwestsoutheast
alignment (Fig. 3). These measured between 0.45m and 0.60m in width and were
fairly shallow, with a depths ranging between 0.10 and 0.20m. The two gullies (7037 and
7049) were aligned perpendicular with G703 and therefore may be part of a contemporary
field system.
Two more gullies (G610 and G611) located within the northern half of the main enclosure
were clearly earlier than the enclosure ditch. Gully G610 was aligned southwest-northeast and
measured around 0.5m in width and 0.3m in depth and had been cut at its eastern extent by a
northwest-southeast aligned gully (G611). This measured 1.04m in width and 0.66m in depth
and produced fragments of Iron Age pottery. To the northeast was a further gully (6184),
which may have been a continuation of either G610 or G611. This measured around 1.13m in
width and around 0.59m in depth at its deepest, and was filled by grey-brown silty sand.

[vulpes]

I don't think you're wrong to be confused Pictish there is a definite ambiguity in the way the term is used. The wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gully would have it that gullies are natural erosional features resembling large ditches or small valleys.

However, the term is used in the building trade to refer to artificial drainage features e.g. rainwater gullies. So clearly it can have other uses. It's use in archaeology seems (in my experience) to have developed to encompass small artificial drainage features such as the pennanular gullies you may find around roundhouses in the midlands. As ever it's all about context! The size distinction is reminiscent of the Bluffer's Guide definitions for Post Hole and Storage/Rubbish Pit. In my view a gully would be something that an average adult would have no trouble stepping across, anything larger is a ditch

Except of course when it's a Palaeochannel!

[pictish]

Is it possibly to do with contents and not size then, for instance
A gully in geographical and natural terms is nearly always the result of water erosion
In most site reports ect I have gone through they appear to be connected with the flow of water, drainage, irrigation ect
The exception being defensive gullies which also tend to be connected to water flow.
Where as ditches although connected to the above have other uses.

[tom wilson]

A ditch is a gully once it has been horizontally truncated enough that there's hardly anything left of it.
Gully, ephemeral, tree bole, natural, archaeology... there's quite a lot of words that most archaeologists are stubbornly unwilling to look up in a dictionary.

[vulpes]

don't know what dictionary you're using TW, but the Concise Oxford has the following: 1. a water worn ravine. 2. a deep artificial channel; a gutter or drain. 3. Aus or NZ - a river valley. Oh... and of course, a cricket fielding position.

So... still plenty of room for ambiguity and artificial or natural origin. Might be best to be a bit more descriptive if using the word.

[Dinosaur]

To take a slightly different approach, I quite often look at function - ditches are by and large landscape divisions, defining eg. the inside and outside of a fort/castle, where one field starts and another stops etc. Small ditches are small ditches (unless they're bedding trenches for hedges....). Gullies are drainage features. If a ditch also drains water, as long as its still a boundary its a ditch. Now dykes.....

[Dinosaur]

Oh, and a trench is something dug with the intention of putting something in it, whether it be a wall, posts, leeks or troops (as opposed to someone coming along later and deciding it would be a good place for a 'structured deposit'/rubbish dump)