The easiest way to build a package from the archive is to use devtools:
library(devtools)
install_url("http://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/uroot/uroot_1.4.tar.gz")
There are three challenges:
You need to have a working development environment. On windows, this means you need Rtools; on the mac, the xcode command line tools; and on linux, the appropriate development packages
There is currently a bug in devtools which means it doesn't find the right version of Rtools on windows. A fix is on its way to CRAN.
There's normally a good reason that a package has been put in the archive: it's likely that it does not pass R CMD check
in the current version of R, so even once you've installed it, it might not work correctly. Be careful!