Make sure the line endings are correct, if you’re serving on a linux box makesure you’re using LF (rather than CR from a mac or crlf from a win machine).
Transmit (by Panic softwarre) will createe files with CR line endings. apache on linux will not correctly read .htaccess files with CR line endings.
hope that helps
RewriteRule ^archives/category/?(.*)?/?([0-9]{4})?/?([0-9]{1,2})?/?([0-9]{1,2})?/?$ index.php?category_name=$1&year=$2&monthnum=$3&day=$4 [QSA]
does not work for me either.
Any other thoughts?