Masonry oven India, tandoors are traditional clay ovens, although these days modern electrically fired tandoors are available. The open-topped tandoor is a transitional design between the earth oven and the Roman-plan masonry oven. In the precolumbian Americas, similar ovens were often made of clay or adobe and are now referred to by the Spanish term "horno" (meaning "oven"). Horns are also traditional in the American Southwest. The traditional direct-fired masonry design is often called a "Roman" or "black" oven and dates in Western culture to at least the Roman Republic. It is known as a black oven because the fire generates soot
Ceramic houses further research into earth architecture. Each of his projects achieved moderate publicity, but Khalili's geltaftan technology has seen little use since the 1980s. This is in part because of the pollution involved in oil firing. The Geltaftan Foundation, and Cal-Earth has since carried on experiments with ceramic housing, but Nader Khalili is most noted today for his work developing Super Adobe: an earth building technique using earth-filled bags as structural elements. The earth used for building ceramic houses is essentially a type of adobe with a higher clay content and fewer impurities. The earth and water are mixed until the