Kit's Coty House

Kit's Coty House

The monument with the Medway Valley behind.
Location within Kent
Coordinates	51°19′12″N 0°30′10″E / 51.3199°N 0.5029°E / 51.3199; 0.5029
Type	Long barrow

Kit's Coty House or Kit's Coty is the name of the remains of a Neolithic chambered long barrow on Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the English county of Kent.

One of the Medway megaliths constructed in the vicinity of the River Medway, Kit's Coty House is located close to five other surviving chambered long barrows: the Coldrum Stones, Addington long barrow, Chestnuts long barrow, the Countless Stones and Coffin Stone.

The site is now under the ownership of non-departmental public body English Heritage, and is open to visitors all year round.

The Early Neolithic was a revolutionary period of British history. Beginning in the fifth millennium BC, it saw a widespread change in lifestyle as the communities living in the British Isles adopted agriculture as their primary form of subsistence, abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that had characterised the preceding Mesolithic period.

Archaeologists have been unable to prove whether this adoption of farming was because of a new influx of migrants coming in from continental Europe or because the indigenous Mesolithic Britons came to adopt the agricultural practices of continental societies. Between 4500 and 3800 BCE, all of the British Isles came to abandon its former Mesolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyle, to be replaced by the new agricultural subsistence of the Neolithic Age.

There is archaeological evidence of violence and warfare in Early Neolithic Britain from such sites as West Kennet Long Barrow and Hambledon Hill, with some groups constructing fortifications to defend themselves from attackers. Contemporary archaeologists have no direct proof of gender relations on the island at this time, although most believe that it was probably a male-dominated society, in keeping with all recorded societies that practice large-scale animal husbandry.