High temperature and moisture fluctuating in tropical areas, enhancing chemical weatheringrnleads to the formation of lateritic soils when the soil is well-drained. These highly weatheredrntropical materials may irreversibly change properties when dried, and even simplyrnremoulding the material may cause significant change in properties.rnEmbankment construction is one of the major activities in Civil Engineering works, whichrnenhance development. Hence, great attention has to be given during construction of suchrninfrastructures when using the tropical soils as construction materials.rnEmbankments which are constructed using lateritic soils have a great advantage in that theyrnare constructed from locally available materials within sound technical and affordablernfinancial capacity. To use lateritic soils safely and economically, appropriate methods ofrndetermining the geotechnical properties, compaction properties, shear strength parameters,rnunconfined compression strength (UCS) have to be investigated and developed.rnAccordingly, in this paper the compaction properties of lateritic soils which are taken fromrnAssossa have been investigated. In addition to this, some peculiar geotechnical and geochemicalrncharacteristics of these soils have been studied. Accordingly, the soils from Assossarnhave been obtained to be true lateritic as the geo-chemical test and tests from laboratoryrnindicated.rnThe soil samples were compacted at optimum moisture content, at drier side of the optimumrnmoisture content and at wetter side of the optimum moisture contents. Then, the UCS testsrnwere done on the soil samples to investigate the variation in strength properties as a functionrnVIIIrnof time after compaction of these soils. Keeping the compacted lateritic soil samples for arnlonger period shows an increase in the UCS values and samples compacted at optimumrnmoisture content have higher values of UCS as compared to the once on the drier and wetterrnsides.rnCompaction of these soils has been influenced by depth, drying, mineralogical compositionrnand compaction energy as illustrated in this thesis. Moreover, the effect is higher as therndegree of laterization increases.rnThe effect of permeability of compacted lateritic soils in relation to change in compactionrnmoisture content and time effect after compaction were investigated.Acordingly, the effect ofrncompaction moisture shows that permeability decreases towards the optimum moisturerncontent. In addition to this, the time effect after compaction has been investigated and the testrnshowed that permeability decreases as time after compaction increases.rnThe soils are less sensitive to expansion when there is fluctuation of water. Further, the soil isrnhighly sensitive to remoulding of samples as the compaction curves and the degree ofrnsensitivity showed.