There've been some advances in that area. Roman concrete was made with a very fine volcanic ash called portsolana. (no idea if there's any connection with the name 'portland cement', but it seems not).

Fly ash (leftovers from burning coal) is very similar to portsolana, and can produce concrete similar to that produced by the Romans.

Still impressive as hell that they came up with it at all - I think I read in Livy(?) that it started when someone noticed a pile of underwater portsolana that had become 'like stone' - and figured out how to replicate what happened. Of course, Livy (or whatever historian it was that I'm misremembering as Livy) wrote that long after the invention of concrete.