Handmade, sun-dried brick typically made from wet mud and straw, sometimes also containing sand, clay, dung, grass, chaff, or blood. It is porous, wettable, susceptible to wet-dry cycle degradation, but good heat insulation. Adobe walls are typically built using mud mortar between the brick layers followed with a mud stucco finish layer. It was used as early as 7000 BCE for houses, buildings, and pyramids, particularly in arid climates such as Mesopotamia, Persia, Palestine, India, China, and the pre-Columbian Americas. For sun-dried brick that may or may contain the binders of adobe, use the more general "sun-dried brick."

http://vocab.getty.edu/page/aat/300081138

Source: AAT