Regolith may cause various problems in geochemical exploration of blind ores such as weak geochemical signals and false positive anomalies reflected in soil. This study aims at delineation of primary and secondary geochemical haloes to identify the geochemical signatures associated with Mississippi Valey Type (MVT) lead and zinc deposits located in Irankuh, Isfahan. To do so, this research has been organised in two phases. In the first phase, multivariate data analyses have been performed on soil data spanning a large area between Tappe Sorkh and Gushfil lead and zinc mines which were further evaluated by subsurface information available from Pb and Zn assays of borehole data. Unsupervised classification through various matrix decomposition techniques including singular value decomposition (SVD), semi-discrete decomposition (SDD), and non-negative matrix factorisation (NNMF) were implemented for recognition of geochemical patterns associated with Pb-Zn mineralisation. SVD technique was utilised in noise removal from soil data followed by bi-clustering the samples and elements through SDD. NNMF also revealed three main geochemical factors dominant in the area and provided a quantitative insight into the identified geochemical patterns. Moreover, three state-of-the-art supervised classification methods including support vector machines, logistic regression, and random forests were optimised through a feature extraction-selection scheme in order to generate a geochemical prospectivity map of new promising areas of lead and zinc mineralisation in northern Irankuh. Results revealed that SVM assisted by SVD as a feature extraction method, and PCA as a feature selection technique outperformed the other approaches. The SVM algorithm was boosted through two main principal components including the factor associated with mineralisation-related elements (Zn, Pb, Cd, Sb, Ag, and Ba) and the factor related to the substitution of major elements of clay minerals in dolomitic host rock mineralogy (Al, K, Ca, Sr, and Mg). The proposed approach suggested at least three new targets of promising lead and zinc mineralisation in the study area. Phase two has mainly focused on lithogeochemical sampling of Pitchi ore body and surrounding host rock in order to detect the pathfinders of lead and zinc mineralisation as well as investigation of possible upward migrations of metals from the buried mineralisation. Second phase was followed by regolith exploration through various selective extraction methods performed on soils collected from a trench over the Pitchi blind ore. Mineralogical studies including X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, electron probe micro analysis (EPMA) and multi-element chemical analysis were performed on the lithogeochemical samples. Mineralogical studies demonstrated that rhodocrosite and ankerite minerals have been substituted in fine dolomites and contain Manganese and Strontium along with pathfinders as exploration keys. Multivariate data analyses on lithogeochemical samples have led to identification of geochemical factors associated with sulphide and non-sulphide mineralisation, clay and host rock mineralogy interactions and upward take of traces. Furthermore, following the electromagnetic studies done on three traverses over the blind mineralisation, a trench was excavated and prepared for soil sampling from the traorted regolith (alluvium and colluvium) covering the Pitchi blind ore buried under ~65 m of dolomitic host rock. XRD analyses on soils stated the key role of manganese and gypsum over the mineralisation boundaries as important exploration signatures. Electric conductivity (EC) and pH measurements were also performed on regolith samples which resulted in elevated patterns of EC and H+ concentrations spatially related to the Pitchi blind ore. Various selective extraction techniques were used to detect geochemical signals associated with blind ore mineralisation responded in regolith through univariate and multivariate data analyses. Finally, a five-stage conceptual dispersion model was proposed to account for the mineralogical and geochemical features observed at Pitchi blind ore.l