Folsom Point Manufacting Decisions: Who Gets to Play? by Nicole M. Waguespack

I went to a presentation by Nicole M. Waguespack. In the presentation, Waguespack speaks about folsom points. She starts out her leture with a quote from the South Dakota State Historical Society, "Folsom points represent perhaps the pinnacle of the flint worker's art in the America's." Waguespack goes on to describe why folsom points are a type of art and how they are a very distinct form of projectile points. Her main points throughout the lecture are about how difficult folsom points are to make and about how skillful a person needs to be to make good folsom point without wasting material.
Folsom points are extremely difficult to manufacture. Failed attmpts to remove the flute often irreversibly damage the piece resulting in a wasteful expenditure of invested time and raw material. Waguespack explains that the dilemma is that reliance on such a failure-prone manufacturing step runs contrary to an overarching lithic production strategy based on conservative raw material use. To solve this dilemma a person should abandon fluting, rely on various fluting contraptions and rely on craft specialists.
Craft specialization is when a person sits back and lets others perfor tasks for us. This specialization would occur when at some distance, available raw material approaches. Another reason this would occur is further and further away the cost is increasing (about 20%-50% of fluting attempts fail.). IN making folsom points there are high skill makers and low skill makers. High skill makers can usually make a folsom point and be left with two channel flakes. A low skill worker usually is left with multiple channel flakes after making a folsom point.
I thought that the lecture was interesting for the fact that I have never really heard much about folsom points before. For projectile points, I have only mostly heard of arrowheads and spearheads. I would have never realized that folsom points would be that difficult to make. The fact that she stated about the percentage of fluting attempts being a failure is 20%-50% really shows how difficult they are to create.