Linux Poison posted a quick tutorial on Archivemount under Ubuntu Linux

Archivemount is a FUSE based file system for Unix variants, including Linux. Its purpose is to mount archives to a mount point where it can be read from or written to as with any other file system. This makes accessing the contents of the archive, which may be compressed, transparent to other programs, without decompressing them. The archive formats that archivemount supports are:

* Old-style tar archives, .
* Most variants of the POSIX ?ustar? format, .
* The POSIX ?pax interchange? format, .
* GNU-format tar archives, .
* Most common cpio archive formats, .
* ISO9660 CD images (with or without RockRidge extensions), .
* Zip archives. .

  Mount archives for read/write under Ubuntu Linux - Archivemount