Nobody builds henges anymore.

They've gone the way of the pyramid, the barrow and the ziggurat, archeological fads that had their day and were eventually replaced by modern marvels like airport terminals, Wal-Marts and Lutheran churches that look like hockey arenas.

The henge that set the standard for large-scale inexplicable engineering and has been voted "Most Popular Henge" for 4,000 consecutive years is, of course, Stonehenge, the circle of enormous rocks erected by the Druids on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England.

Though Stonehenge has remained famous, if not entirely upright, you don't hear a lot about the Druids these days. They were kind of a one-hit wonder in the annals of rock. And why they built the henge -- or, more likely, persuaded other people to build it so they wouldn't trip on their beards and robes -- remains a mystery to this day.

We can't have that, can we?

The last time someone conducted an exploratory expedition to Stonehenge, the Beatles had just done an exploratory expedition to the "Ed Sullivan Show." Forensic anthropology and carbon dating have come a long way since then, so scientists have decided it's worth taking another look at the site and what or who is buried there. And when I say "scientists," I mean "the BBC."

So far, no one has suggested carbon dating Ed Sullivan, but if the dig on Salisbury Plain doesn't make good TV, anything could happen.

I've been to Stonehenge, and I found it a little disappointing. Like many celebrities, it was shorter than I thought. On TV, the stones look the size of tanker trucks, but I think they must be standing on a box.

Also, on TV, there is always a soundtrack of vaguely creepy music, often including a woman singing diminished fifths and minor sevenths and other unsettling intervals that signal the presence of The Supernatural. If its soundtrack had a banjo and kazoo, Stonehenge would be a campfire circle.

When I saw it, it didn't have music over it. It had wind and idling buses and people talking. Maybe that's why it seemed kind of small and underwhelming, like desiccated nonagenarian movie stars who get dragged out for a Lifetime Achievement Award and have to be helped to the lectern by some 6-foot-tall blond Amazon in sequins.

There will never be a Stonehenge-themed hotel in Las Vegas. Thank God.

Maybe it looks small in person because, with its broken and damaged stones and history of solstice ceremonies, it's been fenced off to keep away the demented hippies and monolith-huggers. You can view it only from a distance, so you don't get the full effect. Maybe it would help if they hired a mezzo with a sound system.

The new excavation, funded and documented by the BBC, will be done with minimal disruption by digging a small hole. Think of it as laparoscopic archaeology. Leading the team are two of the United Kingdom's top experts on Stonehenge, David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap.

No, actually, the lead researchers are a couple of professors who not only want to date the monument -- even more difficult than dating a musician -- but are hoping to find evidence that might support their new theory about what it was for.

Most think it was a temple, or an observatory, or a cemetery. Some say Merlin put the stones there, perhaps in an unsuccessful attempt to invent croquet.

But why include all those bluestones from 200 miles away? The huge sarsen stones that make the arches are local, but the smaller bluestones come from the Preseli hills in Western Wales and were probably dragged on logs, floated on rivers and dragged on logs some more to get them there. Seems like an awful lot of trouble, unless you've ever helped a friend move.

These researchers say that the stones were believed to have magical healing powers. Stonehenge may have been a hospital.

What else would you build after dragging rocks 200 miles?

According to BBC News, Neolithic remains found at Stonehenge seem to have not been feeling well when they died; some had broken bones, or skulls that had been operated on. The excavation may uncover a huge pile of decayed Neolithic walkers and a selection of vases from the gift shop.

But why did Stonehenge fall into disrepair? What brought down the Druids? Was it the Romans? The Christians?

My guess: malpractice.