426 Rovina
embellished fashion, as sleeves, especially in the fourteenth century, became
completely detachable and interchangeable.18
The new fashion necessitated the “invention” of buttons, which were used
to open and close garments in vertical or diagonal rows on the front, for but-
toning up sleeves from the wrist to the elbow, and for attaching sleeves to the
robe along the shoulders. At an early stage, buttons were considered primar-
ily as ornaments, sold by jewelers and fabricated from costly materials, such
as gold, silver, pearls, coral, and precious stones. Only from the fourteenth
century onwards did buttons gradually become genuine clothing accessories
made also from copper, glass, and fabric, and available to all social classes in
haberdasheries.19
Nevertheless, documentary sources lack any precise reference to the form
of the period’s buttons. Archaeological data is thus precious, since along with
iconographical sources, it reveals the dissemination in Sardinia, as well as the
rest of Europe, of a spherical type with a concave cavity, sometimes pinched
at the poles, and a ring for sewing the object to the garment. Examples of this
form are widely depicted in European paintings and sculptures after the late
thirteenth century. In Sardinia, for example, it is visible on the figures in the
fourteenth-century frescoes of the church of Nostra Signora di Los Regnos
Altos, at the citadel of Serravalle in Bosa (second half of the fourteenth centu-
ry), and in the bas-relief of the tomb slab of Guido di Dono in Cagliari (1410).20
Numerous archaeological studies conducted in the last decades in various
Sardinian cemeteries from the Middle Ages have made it possible to docu-
ment with precision the characteristics and variety of these buttons, which
were used on the island for at least three centuries.21 They were welded to-
gether from two copper or silver hemispheres, sometimes with a tiny loop
at the top, measuring between six and twelve millimeters in diameter. There
are also more complex varieties, such as one in the shape of a “melon” with
eight longitudinal wedges, from the medieval village of Geridu (Sorso-Sassari),
and a silver one with its upper half adorned with fretwork, from the church of
18 Maria Grazia Muzzarelli, Guardaroba medievale. Vesti e società dal XIII al XVI secolo
(Bologna, 1999).
19 Chiara Frugoni, Medioevo sul naso: occhiali, bottoni e altre invenzioni medievali (Rome,
2001), pp. 102–108.
20 Renata Serra, Pittura e scultura dall’età romanica alla fine del ‘500 (Nuoro, 1990), pp. 62–63,
n. 24, and p. 87, n. 36, respectively.
21 For a detailed examination of finds from northern Sardinia, see Daniela Rovina, “Gioielli e
complementi di abbigliamento basso medievali in Sardegna,” Sardinia Corsica et Baleares
Antiquae: International Journal of Archaeology 4 (2006), pp. 193–211.