Archambault earned her doctorate at the University of California in Berkeley in 1984, where she later taught Native American Studies. As curator of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History she has organized various exhibitions, including Plains Indian Arts: Change and Continuity, 100 Years of Plains Indian Painting, Indian Baskets and Their Makers, and Seminole Interpretations.

Archambault is the lead curator of a multi-institutional curatorial team including American Indians and Euro-Americans. The team is working toward the creation of entirely new exhibit halls featuring seven Indain tribes, all of whom are represented by curatorial team members. During her stay at the American Academy, Archambault worked together with anthropologist Dr. Lynn M. Snyder on a project focusing on the Plains Indians of North America. This project was developed in cooperation with the Berlin Museum of Ethnography, where the two Berlin Prize Fellows studied the extensive North American ethnology collections. In this material culture project, Archambault and Snyder  investigated material choices in the production of Native American personal and ceremonial clothing and regalia, weaponry, and utilitarian objects, in the context of the rapidly changing natural and economic contexts of the early 19th century American Plains.