White pottery seems to have had a special ceremonial significance in early Singapore. The same belief seems to have existed in Kota Cina in the previous century. In face, Kota Cina, although 100-200 years older, seems to have shared many characteristics with fourteenth-century Singapore. Kota Cina in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may have played the role of an early enclave of Chinese settlement in the northern Straits of Malaka much a Singapore did at the Straits' southern end in the fourteenth-century. Much of the pottery found on Fort Canning is well-made white-slipped pottery of Type A, whereas white-slipped earthenware is rare at other sites in the ancient city. Cooking post are rare on the hill; the ceramics found there seem to heve in cluded many small storage vessels. Utilitarian earthenware found at the sites in the Singapore plain between Fort Canning and the sea range from brown and orange to black. Apparently these are the natural colours of the fired clay and no attempt was made to modify them.