Thanks for the advice, Jamie.

I've fallen back to my original READCOMMITTED transaction isolation level. It should work. I don't know why it appears not to.

As you suggested, I experimented with setting both the data archive/delete query and the test query to the SERIALIZATION transaction isolation level. This produced a deadlock on the test query which was not a surprise. I increased the interval between loop executions in the data archive/delete query and the test query executed without incident. Unfortunately, it was not a complete test because at this moment, there are no rows to be archived/deleted.

Your comments, this test, and some additional research I've done has made me realize that my fallacy was almost certainly that I had 2 different queries looking at the same data with different levels of transaction isolation. Phantom reads were definitely the symptom I experienced.

Thank you, all of you, for your responses.