Abstract
The focus of this paper are the stone tools of Çukuriçi Höyük, a prehistoric site situated at the central Aegean coast of Anatolia. The settlement was inhabited from the Neolithic, through the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age 1 periods, a period lasting from the early 7th to the early 3rd millennium BCE. A long-term interdisciplinary study of the excavated lithics with different scientific methods on various stone materials (thin section analysis, pXRF, NAA, LA-ICP-MS) offer new primary data about the procurement strategies of prehistoric societies from a diachronic perspective. The results will be presented for the first time with an overview of all source materials and their distinct use through time.
 The lithic assemblages from Çukuriçi Höyük consist of a considerable variety of small finds, grinding stones and chipped stone tools. The high variability of raw materials within the different categories of tools is remarkable. In addition to stone tools manufactured from sources in the immediate vicinity of the settlement (i.e., mica-schist, limestone, marble, amphibolite, serpentinite), others are of rock types such as chert, which indicate an origin within the broader region. Moreover, volcanic rocks, notably the exceptionally high amount of Melian obsidian found at Çukuriçi Höyük, attest to the supra-regional procurement of distinct rock types. Small stone axes made of jadeite presumably from the Greek island of Syros, also indicate these far-reaching procurement strategies.
 The systematic and diachronic analyses of the stone tools found at Çukuriçi Höyük has demonstrated that as early as the Neolithic period extensive efforts were made to supply the settlement with carefully selected raw materials or finished goods procured from distinct rock sources.
Highlights
We focus on the procurement of local, regional and supra-regional rock sources for the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age communities that inhabited the site Çukuriçi Höyük in order to assess the accessibility of raw materials from a diachronic perspective
The settlement phases excavated at Çukuriçi Höyük date from the Neolithic period in the 7th millennium, the Late Chalcolithic period in the second half of the 4th millennium and the Early Bronze Age 1 period in the first quarter of the 3rd millennium BCE, according to the common terminology used in Anatolia (Horejs 2017: 17, fig. 1.5)
The opal variety CH 6/1, which was analysed as a control sample, is a clear outlier originating from a source area outside the Neogene basin containing the chert varieties
Summary
We focus on the procurement of local, regional and supra-regional rock sources for the Neolithic to Early Bronze Age communities that inhabited the site Çukuriçi Höyük in order to assess the accessibility of raw materials from a diachronic perspective. Such investigations allow the reconstruction of socio-cultural developments mirrored in varying resource management strategies. „[...] could be collected on longer walks (6-20 km), for example during hunting or foraging trips [...]“. Extended mobility has to be assumed already for prehistoric people in this region, especially due to the existence of seafaring communities (Broodbank 2006: 211-220; Horejs 2016; Horejs et al 2015), this classification can be used to point out raw material accessibility of prehistoric coastal societies on a more general level
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