Attribution (latin "attributio") is a type of scientific activity for the assessment of cultural monuments in museums, scientific institutes, related to determining authenticity of an artistic work, its author, place and time of creation and it is carried out by a narrow specialist in this type of art. That is, the main activity of a specialist in attribution is aimed at disclosing and evaluating the above features in order to confirm the characteristics attributed to them. According to this definition, the attribution of jewelry acts as the establishment of the identity of all the characteristics of the object to its essential features.

The analysis of the main modern approaches to the attribution of the subject indicates the use of art criticism assessment (analysis) and research of historical and archival documents.

Due to the constant development of the forgery industry in general, the task of determining only the correspondence of the obviously attributed authorship to the true one is put forward in the first place. The facts obtained as a result of documentary research and art criticism cannot be fully used as evidence of the authenticity of the object. In addition, the questions of determining the memoriality of an object, i.e. its involvement in outstanding personalities, significant events, etc., remain without attention to the attributive characteristics.

Art criticism does not aim to study the social significance, aesthetic value and beauty in general, which affects the perception of the product and its value on the market.

Valuations of jewelry based on aesthetic value and social significance cannot be replaced by historical-sociological, historical-bibliographic and other modifications of the historical approach. It requires its own axiological, value-based approach.

In addition, the limitations of attribution by the cognitive-analytical approach are also due to the fact that its purpose was mainly reduced to determining the historical authenticity, originality, reliability of the fact and material object of jewelry located in the museum fund and do not function on the market as a commodity. Therefore, the aesthetic, technical value and social significance of objects that have been removed from us for centuries, and their peculiar patina of outstanding time and layers of various cultural eras discovered by restorers and textual specialists, were sometimes perceived as by itself, without additional research, analysis and evaluation.

The wording of the concept of "attribution" includes several types of assessment, in particular identification by type (assortment), style, content (time of creation, author, etc.). Individual facts obtained during the research are not the subject of attribution. The obtained data are analyzed, compared with the signs identified on other typical subjects and based on this, a final conclusion is made about the authenticity, chronological affiliation of the subject, representing a professional assessment of the revealed facts. Such an assessment may change in the process of identifying new facts obtained while working on the subject. Therefore, attribution is the accumulation of scientific knowledge about a monument, which is carried out by a narrow specialist for maintaining scientific passports in museums, forming collections of cultural values. However, the usage of only given documentary, literary, encyclopedic sources and typical prototypes for comparison as means of this research, it is necessary to specify the definition of "attribution".

It would be advisable to define attribution as a type of appraisal activity based on the practical and theoretical experience of a specialist in a narrow field of art and aimed at identifying documentary, information support in determining the typology of the object to confirm its authorship, chronological affiliation, authenticity.