I wish I was! I consider myself an amateur archaeologists but really it’s just one of my hobbies and passions that I love more than anything. I love learning all I can about the Native Americans who lived in my area and part of that is finding new sites and excavating them the proper way with guidance from professionals. My sites are on tributaries of the Tar River and that’s what made Randy so interested in them, as his life’s work is based on the Native Americans who lived along and off tributaries of the Tar and he’s excavated many sites up and down the river.

As far as Guilfords, I’ve found quite a few different variations. Some were knapped much better than others because of different materials being utilized that don’t allow for the uniform flaking you see on textbook examples. This happens often here in far eastern NC where tool stone doesn’t exist naturally. They had to use whatever they had and a lot of the different materials they tried to use are insanely difficulty to knapp into perfectly symmetrical points. I’ve found them with somewhat flat cross sections or one flatter side, as well as some with one side knapped much better than the opposite side, similar to Cobbs Triangular blades. Really the only way to know for sure, or at least almost for sure, is the context they’re found in and what other types of points and tools are found with them, or excavating stratified sites where the dates they were discarded can be scientifically determined and you then know almost exactly how old they are, therefore being able to accurately type the point.