The experimental identification of mechanical properties is crucial in mechanics for understanding material behavior and for the development of numerical models. Classical identification procedures employ standard shaped specimens, assume that the mechanical fields in the object are homogeneous, and recover global properties. Thus, multiple tests are required for full characterization of a heterogeneous object, leading to a time consuming and costly process. The development of non-contact, full-field measurement techniques from which complex kinematic fields can be recorded has opened the door to a new way of thinking. From the identification point of view, suitable methods can be used to process these complex kinematic fields in order to recover multiple spatially varying parameters through one test or a few tests. The requirement is the development of identification techniques that can process these complex experimental data. This thesis introduces a novel identification technique called the constitutive compatibility method. The key idea is to define stresses as compatible with the observed kinematic field through the chosen class of constitutive equation, making possible the uncoupling of the identification of stress from the identification of the material parameters. This uncoupling leads to parametrized solutions in cases where 5 the solution is non-unique (due to unknown traction boundary conditions) as demonstrated on 2D numerical examples. First the theory is outlined and the method is demonstrated in 2D applications. Second, the method is implemented within a domain decomposition framework in order to reduce the cost for processing very large problems. Finally, it is extended to 3D numerical examples. Promising results are shown for 2D and 3D problems