Desert Dancer - you're absolutely right, there were plenty of 2 & 3 finger styles before Scruggs, and I meant to add that to the clawhammer comment but let my brain get ahead of my fingers.

For some reason banjos are hard to hear on the old timey records - the fiddle and guitar (and once in a while harmonica) seem to get placed in the foreground. And it's hard to figure out what they're doing. Only once in a while can you hear Charlie Poole's banjo out front, and he was considered one of the better pickers of his era. When you do hear him, its almost like he was playing with a flat pick (sometimes), who knows ???