Brass and bronze are two different alloys with copper. In bronze, tin 
clearly predominates, in brass, zinc. There is, of course, overlap when both 
tin and zinc are present  in somewhat equal proportions ... It is usually 
possible to distinguish the rare "brass"  from the common "bronze" ancient 
coin/artifact on the basis of observable physical attributes such as color 
... where zinc causes a "yellowing" of the alloy and tin causes a 
"reddening." A spectrographic determination is more reliable.

Since zinc was not "discovered" in antiquity (zinc never occurs in the 
metallic form in nature ... copper ores in which zinc occurs are rare in 
comparison to those containing an admixture of tin), artifacts which could 
be said to be "brass" were decidedly rare until after the process of 
refining zinc was invented.

There is quite a knowledgable (for the times ... i.e. 1814) discussion of 
the history of zinc (and touching thereby on the term "brass") here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=oiMJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA69&dq=%22history+of+brass%22&as_brr=1#PPA67,M1

Much additional valuable historical information concerning brass (including 
a list of historically equivalent terms/synonyms) is here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=4MkxAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA103&dq=%22history+of+brass%22&as_brr=1#PPA100,M1



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "geoff carver" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 3:18 PM
Subject: first/third brass


does "first/third brass" refer only to the size/class of a coin, not its 
material?
does anyone happen to know when "brass" began to be labelled "bronze" (or 
did the Romans actually have brass coins? I have a lot of Victorian & 
earlier references to things being made of "brass" that i'm sure must be 
bronze)