Regarding the recent discussion of fox hunting...

Jan Lloyd was quite correct to note that there are still active hunts in the UK.

Scotland restricted, but did not outright ban, hunting with hounds in 2002.  England and Wales restricted, but did not outright ban, hunting with hounds from 2005. Traditional hunting with hounds remains legal in Northern Ireland.

Even where hunting with hounds is restricted, many hunting activities remain legal.  There are differences between the Scottish legislation and the English and Welsh legislation, but roughly speaking it usually remains legal to use dogs to flush an unidentified animal out of its lair (though not to kill it), or to follow an artificial scent.  Except in Northern Ireland, it is (usually) illegal to unleash dogs with the specific purpose of chasing a fox or hare and killing it (hunting rabbits with traditional hare-hunting breeds remains legal).  

There are well over 200 active legal hunts in the United Kingdom (including 6 fell hunts in the northwest of England who hunt on foot rather than on horseback).

From the perspective of historical archaeology, those of you who attended the 2013 SHA conference in Leicester were visiting one of the most active hunting regions in the entire country, with three hunts converging on the nearby town of Melton Mowbray (home of Stilton cheese and the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie). The most famous of these is likely the Quorn Hunt (http://www.quorn-hunt.co.uk/), and the other two are the Belvoir Hunt (http://www.belvoir-hunt.co.uk/) and the Cottesmore Hunt (http://www.cottesmore-hunt.co.uk/).

When I was the archaeology lab supervisor at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest in central Virginia back in the mid-90s, the local hunt was the Bedford County Hunt (http://bedfordcountyhunt.com/).  A quick google search reveals that the North American Masters of Foxhounds Association and Foundation has an alphabetical listing of ca. 163 member hunts (http://www.mfha.org/hunts-alphalist.html), 11 of which are in Canada.

All of which perhaps gets us some distance away from the original artefact - but it does serve to indicate how culturally entrenched hunting has been and remains in both the United Kingdom and (in a more geographically limited manner) parts of North America.

Alasdair Brooks