Holland uses sculpture to suggest that these ornaments were meant to be worn in womens' headdresses as a development from feathered crowns worn in earlier times and possibly connected to the iconography of the sphinx.
This series of papers presents a thorough and enlightening overview of the nature of the Erechtheion's remains, its history of renovation and destruction, and the purposes to which it may have been put.
Lester B. Holland, professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, addresses the puzzle of Doric entablature, suggesting that the persistence of the form of the entablature is due to its mimicry of earlier fortifications.