Rammed Earth Rammed earth is earth or mud mixed with clay or cement and packed into temporary forms. It is one of humanitys oldest building techniques, especially after the emergence of settled communities. Jericho, the earliest known city, was built of packed earth and mud brick. The Great Wall of China, dating back over 5000 years, was made of stone and rammed earth. Rammed earth was used not only for simple housing, but for sophisticated structuresvast monuments, institutional buildings, temples and mosques (Easton, 1996). Although most associated with arid regions of the world, rammed earth is also found in temperate climates. It was, for example, spread by the Romans and Phoenicians in their conquests. In the Rhone River Valley of France, it became the dominant form of architecture for perhaps 2000 years. Now called pise de terre by the French, these packed earth structures constitute about 15 percent of rural buildings there. In the Americas, Pueblo peoples utilized ancient earth-building systems incorporating mud and dressed stone in what is now the Southwest US. When the Spanish came to the area, they introduced adobesun-dried mud brick. On the east coast, the Spanish utilized a form of rammed earth (mixed with seashells) called taipa in building some of the first permanent structures in North America. In the USs oldest city, St. Augustine, we still find many examples surviving; while in South America, taipa has persisted for centuries as a dominant style, particularly in Brazil, Chile and Peru. French and German immigrants of the late 1700s and early 1800s brought pise to more temperate North America, where there are still a number of stately pise homes surviving in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey (Grometer, 2002).