The main emphasis of the paper is put on the experimental verification and comparison of classical modal analysis techniques and recurrence plots sensitivity to damage size. Identification experiments were carried out for the laboratory object subjected to random and chirp excitations, respectively. In the course of carried out experiments, the process of damage propagation was simulated by the successive drilling into one of the object elements. Measured time histories of system responses were analyzed with the application of the classical modal analysis, recurrence plots (RP), cross recurrence plots (CRP) and joint recurrence plots (JRP) methods. Obtained results proved that the RP, CRP and JRP methods are much more sensitive to changes in dynamical system properties resulting from damage initialization and propagation than classical modal analysis methods and can be successfully applied to damage detection and tracking changes in the system natural frequencies.