Ancient earthen building techniques that originated before the advent of conventional building materials have regained the attention of the scientific and broader public with the beginning of the 21 century. Research has been performed throughout the world in the past few years. However, due to a lack of information, the Croatian earthen building fund was not widely recognised. This study was performed within the scope of the first scientific research project, which is directed at understanding the seismic behaviour of eastern Croatian rammed earth houses. In order to understand the advancements in earthen houses made worldwide, a literature review of several manuals and normative documents, as well as more than 50 research papers, was performed. Observation of existing rammed earth houses in eastern Croatia was performed, and five documented houses were presented and their layout and usage discussed, thus creating a database of eastern Croatian rammed earth houses. Key observations concern differences in granular composition between literature recommendations and eastern Croatian rammed earth houses. On the other hand, soil plasticity and compressive strength are in line with the majority of recommendations. Knowledge gained through literature review and field observation was the valuable foundation for performing experimental analysis of rammed earth walls. Four rammed earth walls were tested in-plane by varying excitation regimes, material composition and drying periods. However, it was determined that differences did not majorly affect the load-bearing capacity of walls or structural behaviour factor. Results were further used to perform numerical model validation in ANSYS. A parametric analysis comprising 54 numerical models was performed. In total, 18 different wall systems found i traditional rammed earth houses from eastern Croatia were analysed by applying three levels of vertical stress on top of the wall. Parametric analysis showed that rammed earth walls should not be considered free-standing units, separated from other walls in the structure, since the loadbearing and seismic capacity could be overestimated. However, the flange wall length does not need to be longer than 50 % of the observed wall length. A structural behaviour factor of ca. 2.0 was determined, thus proving that values greater than 1.5 can be used for wall systems observed. Two approaches for determining response spectrum curves were followed: the current generation of Eurocode 8 and a draft of a new generation of the standard. Thus, differences between the two generations were considered in the context of rammed earth walls. Namely, according to the draft of a new generation of Eurocode 8, traditional rammed earth walls could withstand seismic activities that could be expected in eastern Croatia, but only if the shortest return period is considered. However, the current version of Eurocode 8 yields a more negative assessment because rammed earth walls did not show adequate seismic behaviour in any of the observed cases.