<P> At the Summer Solstice 2003, which fell over a weekend, over 30,000 people attended a gathering at and in the stones . The 2004 gathering was smaller (around 21,000 people). </P> <P> (((annotations))) </P> <P> Throughout recorded history, Stonehenge and its surrounding monuments have attracted attention from antiquarians and archaeologists . John Aubrey was one of the first to examine the site with a scientific eye in 1666, and in his plan of the monument, he recorded the pits that now bear his name, the Aubrey holes . William Stukeley continued Aubrey's work in the early eighteenth century, but took an interest in the surrounding monuments as well, identifying (somewhat incorrectly) the Cursus and the Avenue . He also began the excavation of many of the barrows in the area, and it was his interpretation of the landscape that associated it with the Druids . Stukeley was so fascinated with Druids that he originally named Disc Barrows as Druids' Barrows . The most accurate early plan of Stonehenge was that made by Bath architect John Wood in 1740 . His original annotated survey has recently been computer redrawn and published . Importantly Wood's plan was made before the collapse of the southwest trilithon, which fell in 1797 and was restored in 1958 . </P> <P> William Cunnington was the next to tackle the area in the early nineteenth century . He excavated some 24 barrows before digging in and around the stones and discovered charred wood, animal bones, pottery and urns . He also identified the hole in which the Slaughter Stone once stood . Richard Colt Hoare supported Cunnington's work and excavated some 379 barrows on Salisbury Plain including on some 200 in the area around the Stones, some excavated in conjunction with William Coxe . To alert future diggers to their work they were careful to leave initialled metal tokens in each barrow they opened . Cunnington's finds are displayed at the Wiltshire Museum . In 1877 Charles Darwin dabbled in archaeology at the stones, experimenting with the rate at which remains sink into the earth for his book The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms . </P>

The main stones of stonehenge are laid in place