In areas where traditional archaeological material is sparse or absent, soil archives provide invaluable insights into past human presence and activity. Soil geochemical analysis thereby enables the reconstruction of land use, activities, and human-environment interactions through their chemical signatures. By dwelling, farming, herding, and engaging in daily life, humans leave distinct elemental traces in the soil. Once extracted, variations in elemental concentrations and their spatial distribution allow for the identification of activity zones and the reconstruction of past human presence over time. This approach has been successfully applied across various archaeological contexts, from individual structures to a broader landscape scale. However, its effectiveness depends on the specific ‘memory’ of local soils, thus their capacity to retain and reflect past environmental information. To date, this aspect has not been systematically assessed for (high) mountain soils. In recent years, pilot studies in mountain archaeology have slowly begun incorporating soil geochemical methods into their research frameworks. One such project, conducted in 2023 on the Dachstein Plateau, Upper Austria, employed a sampling raster across structural remains and their surroundings. Aiming to evaluate both the potential and limitations of geochemical analysis in (high) mountain contexts, preliminary results have shown the overall applicability of such approaches for mountain archaeological endeavours. While much remains to be understood about the sources and dynamics of chemical elements in mountain soils, the study offers an initial basis for discussion and further methodological development in these specific research areas.