What were the Asherah poles and the incense altars?

The chapter says what they were to the people who made them: "the work of their hands" and "that which their fingers have made" (17:8). The Law speaks of planting an Asherah: "You shall not plant for yourselves an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the LORD your God’s altar" (Deuteronomy 16:21), and it commanded Israel, "cut down their Asherah poles" (Deuteronomy 7:5; also Exodus 34:13). The word the WEB gives here as incense altars is chamman (tap incense altars); Brown-Driver-Briggs gives it as "sun-pillar, used in idolatrous worship", and the WEB gives it as sun images in 2 Chronicles 14:5. When Josiah was king (2 Chronicles 34:1), "He broke down the altars, beat the Asherah poles and the engraved images into powder, and cut down all the incense altars throughout all the land of Israel" (2 Chronicles 34:7). This chapter says people will not look to them in that day (17:8), and chapter 27 says they "shall rise no more" (Isaiah 27:9). Other chapters tell of more that was done with them, as when Gideon was told, "cut down the Asherah that is by it" (Judges 6:25). These notes say only what the Bible says of them and add nothing from outside it.