D. L. True (August 31, 1923 – June 20, 2001) was an archaeologist who worked in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

, particularly

San Diego County San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the f ...

, and in northern

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

. Born in San Pedro, California, son of a lumberyard foreman, True worked in a shipyard and served as an aerial-gunnery instructor for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war he established a small avocado ranch in Pauma Valley, an inland area in northern San Diego County, also working as a school bus driver. True became interested in and thoroughly familiar with the archaeological remains of the Pauma region's prehistoric cultures. Under the mentorship of Clement W. Meighan, he enrolled in anthropology at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

, where he was cited by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

'' magazine as one of the dozen top graduates in 1961. He went on to receive his doctorate from UCLA in 1966, with a dissertation entitled "Archaeological Differentiation of Shoshonean and Yuman Speaking Groups in Southern California". He served on the anthropology faculty of the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

, from 1965 until his retirement. True was instrumental in defining the Pauma,

San Luis Rey Mission San Luis Rey de Francia ( es, Misión San Luis Rey de Francia) is a former Spanish mission in San Luis Rey, a neighborhood of Oceanside, California. This Mission lent its name to the Luiseño tribe of Mission Indians. At its prime, ...

, and

Cuyamaca Cuyamaca (Kumeyaay: ''‘Ekwiiyemak'') is a region of eastern San Diego County. It lies east of the Capitan Grande Indian Reservation in the western Laguna Mountains, north of Descanso and south of Julian. Named for the 1845 Rancho Cuyamaca Mex ...

complexes and in elucidating their roles in regional prehistory. Together with Claude N. Warren, he also helped to clarify understanding of the early San Dieguito and

La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...

complexes.Waugh, Georgie, and Mark E. Basgall (editors). 2008. ''Avocados to Millingstones: Papers in Honor of D. L. True''. Monographs in California and Great Basin Anthropology No. 5. California State University, Sacramento.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:True, Delbert Leroy Archaeologists of California 1923 births 2001 deaths 20th-century American archaeologists