A new identification method for joint stiffness and damping has been developed by using the substructure synthesis method and finite element method in this p aper. Firstly, the identification equation of jointis established according to the equilibrium and compatibility conditions. Then, the finite element models or lumped parameter models of substructures are established and updated, which will be used to replace thereal models and to obtain the data needed. In order to ensure the stability of numerical calculation, the inconsistent solution of th e identification equation is translated to the general solution by the principl e of least squares, and the concept of weight is introduced to make use of all the measured data. Finally, this method is applied to two simulated examples, and the results indicate that the proposed method has high identification precision.