Multiple blocks of crust >2.7 Ga in age or with older model ages appear throughout the Superior craton as isolated fragments. These terranes are today distributed radially, based on their oldest rock age, from old marginal terranes (Northern Superior and the Minnesota River Valley) through those with significant crustal gneiss blocks (North Caribou, Winnipeg River, Marmion, and Opinaca) or rare indicators such as 3.5-3.1 Ga model ages in northern Wabigoon, to younger central terranes (Abitibi, Pontiac and Wawa). This distribution is not typical of modern accreted continental margins that exhibit a consistent younging direction. Component terranes play a pivotal role in reconstructions of Archean tectonic histories that must consider the entire subcontinental lithosphere by using relevant observations of structures within both the crust and mantle. Multi-azimuthal receiver function analysis identified a regional Ps seismic discontinuity striking 065 and dipping at 7 degrees to the east-southeast within the mantle of the Superior craton. This strike roughly parallels that of: (1) a previously recognized regional extensional fault striking 057º and dipping 18º within the western Superior crust, (2) the axis of the turbititic Quetico Basin, and (3) an apparent Moho keel. Here we jointly interpret these seismic features as a detachment or decollement with characteristics of an unconformity, low-angle thrust, and normal faults. An unconformity with quartz arenites characterizes the top of 2.9 Ga gneissic basement within the North Caribou terrane. Thrusting probably relates to the dominant phase of folding and horizontal shortening strain, mineralization and peak metamorphism that all occurred during the Kenoran (D2) crustal deformation at 2.72-2.66 Ga. Here we suggest that this shortening occurred when the distal margin of a composite North Caribou superterrane obliquely underthrust the entire lithosphere of the converging thinner, juvenile Abitibi-Wawa terrane along a low-angle, so-called ‘flat slab’ subduction trajectory. Sulphide- and carbon-rich metasediments make good conductors. Conductivity patterns widely typical of the Superior craton suggest a whole lithosphere mineralizing system similar to that proposed beneath the Olympic Dam mine camp in the Gawler craton of southern Australia. Broad (100 km) mantle conductors at 90-110 km depth beneath the southern Abitibi underlie strong conductors within the mid-crust observed amid a generally conductive zone at 15-30 km depth. Historical ‘breaks’ represent steep, isoclinal folds or thrust faults within upper crustal greenstones that detach within midcrustal gneisses and some older through-going steep crustal structures. Isolated conductors core these isoclinal fold or fault zones and thus connect the mid-crustal conductive zone to the near-surface along mapped high-strain zones. We propose metal-rich turbititic sediments on top of the North Caribou superterrane margins were underthrust to 80-120 km depths, melted and rose within the Abitibi lithosphere as carbonatitic fluids, concentrating and depositing gold and other economically important metals where conductors occur.