Brass in its various forms has had a long history, stretching as far back as the prehistoric eras. The earliest examples of its use can be found in isolated samples within Ancient China has far back as the 5th millennium BC, with larger samples cropping up in the Middle-East around the 3rd millennium BC. Due to the levels of zinc found within these samples it's believed that they were naturally occurring brass alloys rather than anything produced artificially. Its distinctive golden colour led to it being referred to as oreichalkos by the Greeks, which the Romans adopted as aurichalcum -- "golden copper". Plato recognised brass as being very rare and almost as valuable as gold, while Pliny the Elder wrote several times about deposits of brass that used to be found on Cyprus, before the mines were exhausted by the 1st century AD.

The first accounts of brass production, as opposed to harvesting naturally occurring deposits, seem to indicate that the practise originated from the Middle-East and Eastern Mediterranean. Writings at the time described the process as heating ore to produce droplets of "false silver", most probably the zinc that was then used with copper to form brass. Brass had a wide variety of uses, from weaponry, to metal plates, to drinking vessels, to jewellery, to sculpture. By the beginnings of the first millennium AD copper was being produced in sufficient quantities to make it viable for coinage, as well as military equipment and other objects throughout the Roman Empire. So prevalent was it to Romans that Jews in Palestine even forbade brass's use, due to its associations to the occupying power. Shortly after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the resultant disruptions in the tin trade, essentially for the creation of bronze, brass seemed to peak in popularity in the East. Copper-alloy Egyptian artefacts from the Islamic conquest era, for example, are nearly entirely composed of brass.

For most of the medieval period brass was replaced in the West largely by gunmetals and other alloys, although brass continued to be found in Scandinavia, the German states and the Low Countries, due in part to the high amounts of calamine ore. The linguist legacy is still felt in France today, where brass objects are referred to as dinanterie, after a major brass production centre in Belgium called Dinant. The old cementation process used by the Romans largely remained, however written sources seem to indicate slight variance in practise. For example, whereas Romans tended to use close-topped crucibles, Islamic and Medieval brass-workers used open-topped crucibles and higher temperatures.

The Renaissance saw numerous refinements and improvements to the brass-making process, such as the reinvention of lidded cementation crucibles in Germany. The process also became more understood -- initially medieval metal workers had no concept of zinc vapour being a metal. Likewise, they began to notice that bronze became heavier as it turned into brass, as well as becoming more golden in colour as calamine was added. Eventually it was discovered that zinc could be used with copper to make brass as well, a process called speltering. By the beginning of the 18th century, it was recognised that calamine was little more than "unmeltable zinc" and that zinc itself was a sort of "half-ripe metal". Gradually, over the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, brass production techniques were built upon and improved, until at last brass came to easily mass produced. Eventually this, along with demands for low-corrosion metals for purposes such as piping, metal plates for ships and tubing for artillery meant that the ancient cementation process was doomed to die out.