Ok, I figured it out.
The issue is that the directory has to have "AllowOverride" set for the archive directory. This needs to be done within the httpd.conf file.
Some people here are probably using virtual hosts and they tend to set up their servers so that users can override options in any directory. Apparently the default apache installation doesn't do this.
A couple of links I found helpful while researching this:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/howto/htaccess.html
http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/stopping.html
This is a great hack!
Jim