Today’s image from the archive is of a ninth century Saxon silver hooked tag excavated in 1991 from a ditch at Sarre. The hooked tag measures 2.5cm high and 1.5cm wide and is a crude design of a Trewhiddle style bird in niello inlay.

Decorated hooked tags are known from the seventh century and continue until the late Medieval period probably because they could be used multiple ways. The holes at the top of the plate were for fixing to cloth or leather and would have been used in a similar way to hook and eye fastenings. Similar tags have been found in association with coin hoards and may be purse fasteners, others have been found in graves where they may have been attached to garters.