Convention is to refer to non-gunpowder artillery as 'machines' or 'engines'.
The size of such weapons and logistical demands of providing the consumable projectiles to be shot emphasized the use of such machines mainly for siege operations - employed both by the besiegers and the defenders. However, such machines, in their diminutive form, were occasionally used in field battles. Note that this page addresses only mechanical artillery and not the broader range of devices, such as towers and rams, employed in siege operations. The names to distinguish specific machines used by contemporary chroniclers and other observers were not standard. This leaves today's historians with some doubt, in some cases, as to what specific machine is really being described in the old texts.