428 Rovina
buttons are also closely reproduced in the bone “bead” buttons of certain tra-
ditional Sardinian costumes.
We do not know if these buttons were imported or produced locally, but
probably at least some of them were made in Sardinia. Various documentary
sources testify to the significant activity of goldsmiths in late medieval and
modern times. In Sassari, the civil statutes of the late thirteenth century reg-
ulated the activity of silversmiths with specific reference to the production
of silver “butones,”26 and there is mention of a silversmith street in various
fifteenth-century documents. Analogous evidence from the fourteenth, fif-
teenth, and sixteenth centuries refers to Alghero and Cagliari, and documents
the presence of Sardinian, Tuscan, and Catalan craftsmen in the two cities, as
well as the manufacture of objects made of coral in Alghero.27
In addition to buttons, simple circular copper and more rarely silver rings
are frequently found in Sardinian burials of the Middle Ages. They were used
as loops for tying garments with ribbons or laces.28 Other basic clothing ac-
cessories were buckles for belts, vestments, bags, and shoes. The typical late
medieval buckle, the one most frequently found in the aforesaid cemeteries in
Sardinia, as well as in the rest of Italy and in Rougiers, was of a simple circu-
lar form: a molded metal ring, nearly always bronze, to which was attached a
movable tongue, linked to the ring. Its dimensions could vary from three to five
centimeters in diameter, and it was used by both men and women (Fig. 16.10).29
Somewhat less common are semi-circular types, D-shaped with a counter-
plate, occasionally adorned with engraved ornaments made with a burin.
Some belts were decorated with studs—conical ones made of iron—as in a
burial in the cemetery of Posada, or circular ones of metal foil with radial deco-
rations, such as those of unknown provenance preserved at the Museo di Irgoli
(Nuoro).30 Smaller circular or rectangular buckles were used to close bags and
shoes.
26 Pasquale Tola, ed., Codex diplomaticus Sardiniae. Historiae Patriae Monumenta, 2 vols
(Turin, 1861–1868), vol. I, part II, 578, r. XXXXIIII.
27 Marisa Porcu Gaias, “La diffusione del gioiello nella Sardegna medioevale e moderna.
I corredi delle classi dominanti e i “tesori” delle chiese,” in Gioielli. Storia, linguaggio, re-
ligiosità dell’ornamento in Sardegna, 45–80 (Nuoro, 2004), pp. 46–47; Aldo Sari, “La gioi-
elleria dal Medioevo all’età moderna,” in Gli ornamenti preziosi dei Sardi, ed. M. Atzori
(Sassari, 2000), pp. 141–219.
28 Rovina, “Gioielli e complementi di abbigliamento,” p. 202.
29 For a detailed study of the findings in Sardinia and their types, see Rovina, “Gioielli e
complementi di abbigliamento,” pp. 199–202.
30 Rovina, “Gioielli e complementi di abbigliamento,” p. 202.