Well as it turns out, my main question is a duplicate of Put gcc libs .data in specific section?, though since I also asked about the wildcard placement / order I will leave this question posted.
The answer to my first quest: placing a wildcard entry before other sections will prevent those other sections from properly importing the specified object file. This behavior is linker-specific, since I have seen other linkers where this is not the case.
The way to resolve this is to be sure to place the generic section last in the linker script:
SECTIONS
{
ER_SRAM 0x20000000:
{
someLib.obj (.bss)
}
ER_CCM 0x10000000:
{
* (.bss)
}
}
As for referring to the object files contained in archive (.lib) files. The answer was given in the linked post, but here it is again:
Add a wildcard to the embedded object file in the section delcaration:
ER_SRAM 0x20000000:
{
*someLib.obj (.bss)
}
The caveat here is that since a wildcard is used in the object file name, if the file is missing or the entry is misspelled, the linker will not throw an error.