why is an archive member linked in ?

[Philippe De Muyter]

I need to answer the following ld-related question : why is some specific
archive-member linked in ?  Is there a gld option available 
or some other more intricated way  to answer that question ?

In the specific case I encountered, removing the module from the archive
made my link command succeed, while with the module in the archive my
link command failed because of some unresolved symbols in the module
that got linked in.

Thanks in advance

Philippe De Muyter