 Lekson believes that Chetro Ketl was most likely not occupied by scores of families, and in that sense was not a pueblo as early archeologists had concluded.He also notes that, while most if not all round rooms in the canyon have traditionally been labeled as kivas, the smaller ones found at Chetro Ketl were most likely not kivas, "but the final and most elaborate form of the pit-house", which had served as the region's primary housing structure during the five hundred years prior to the settlement of Chaco Canyon.He proposed that Chacoan great houses were royal palaces; Chetro Ketl was a residence for the elite, but also a central location for governance, storage, craftworks, ritual, and bureaucracy.