In a different topic, this came up. We should discuss this because Latin has no word for "zinc." The metals of the ancients were gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, tin, and lead. I agree that we identify orichalcum that way in our time. I am not sure how they perceived it. It bears also on our beliefs about "electrum" or "white gold." Tin, for example, while called "stannous" in Latin, is also called "plumbnum album" or "white lead" in some texts. Lacking an atomic theory of matter the ancients did not perceive metals as we do today. Electrum was considered a separate metal, even though it could be made from silver and gold. Silver and gold were recognized in astrology, for example, as being identified with the moon and sun, but no celestial body is identified with electrum. So, too, with bronze on the one hand and orichalcum on the other, are distinctions perhaps not theirs. Copper was identified with the planet Venus - Aphrodite having been born on or near Cyprus - but no "bronze planet" exists. I agree that we make these distinctions among metals and their alloys. I am not sure whether, how, or why they did. Among the many cultural disconnects is that by academic publications going back to the Renaissance, we have a long tradition of intellectual hegemony. The ancient world did not.
I saw a video somewhere on the re-creation of the minting of ancient roman coins - first the blast furnace, the pouring the hot metal into a sheet of planchet moulds, the trimming of the planchets from the sheets, re-heating, and then striking with a die and an anvil. Not sure how much is known about the pre-blast furnace mixing of alloys and how the romans (and greeks) accomplished this.
Spodium refers to bone ash in particular. The element zinc was extracted from ore and smelted (see the Celator article) by the ancient Romans. Strabo, being Greek-speaking, calls the element pseudargyros -- a Greek word meaning "false silver." It is unknown what the Romans might have called it in their language due to the paucity of metallurgical texts that remain. Strabo then notes that an alloy of copper and pseudargyros is known by some as oreichalkos (Natural History xxxiii 95ff). The word orichalcum is thus not some modern coinage; it is an ancient term used for this alloy. The great German alchemist Paracelsus coined German-Latin hybrid zincum in his 16th century book Liber Mineralium II.
