File:Possible Medieval Tuning Peg (FindID 252054).jpg

English: A cast copper alloy peg of probable Medieval date, perhaps with musical association. It has a polyhedral shaped head with a raised collar and deep circumferential groove at the point where the head joins the shaft. The shaft itself is cylindrical in form but with slight faceting to produce an almost hexagonal section, and tapers very slightly towards a blunt, rounded point. On one side of the shaft approximately a third of the way down is a deep transverse incision that may be the result of poor production or perhaps a later addition. The polyhedral head has extensive decoration that comprises a lozenge shaped panel at the top of the head containing a cross patteee with a voided central plain cross. At each corner of the head are small triangular panels with neatly incised borders. The sides of the head have lozenge shaped panels, two of which are pierced with a circular perforation that transects the head. The remaining two, opposing panels have Cross-of-Wedges decorative motifs within an incised border. The entire object measures 33.93mm in height, 8.45mm in width (at head), 8.91mm in thickness (at head), and weighs 8.92g. This neatly produced and decorative object appears to be a peg of some sort. It has some parallels with wooden and bone tuning pegs from musical instruments noted in Medieval Winchester (see Biddle, 1990: pp. 711-718). Indeed, it would not look out of place as a tuning peg for a stringed instrument, the perforation in the head serving to hold the string in place. The only difficulty with this identification is the lack of a good parallel and the fact that the decorative motifs on the sides of the head would have been hidden by the strings. The decoration suggests a Medieval date for the current object.