That's a beauty! You could be right on your theory! I would suspect that any community of people had certain ones that made their way making things for the community much like any other time in history. Most were probably instructed on "how to" as a part of everyday living, but the talented ones probably made things for others. I'm really not sure on present day typing though. When we judge something by what the flaking looks like or the specific shapes of artifacts I think we take it to much for granted that it's made by another culture or a different style. I think the material used steers some of that and also the talent of the maker comes into play. I know the dating process is studied well by the layers they're found in on controlled digs and is probably fairly close to aging artifacts, but surface finds and water finds can't be judged that way necessarily. If you notice, on the sites we use to identify artifacts, different areas call the same type of points different names...
We have knappers in this community. If we had ten different people here try to make a certain type of point, not all would look the same. Not all would have the same characteristics of flaking. Not all would be of the same material. Not all would be the same size or shape and again, that would have more to do with material and talent than knowledge of what it's supposed to look like.
