Towns and Trade  What did the life of a town depend on?______________________________.  What type of economy did these early towns have? ____________________________: a person trades goods rather than money for goods or services.

Foreign Trade  Many towns were built around _________________ or temporary markets.  Traders would bring back many unusual goods from their travels; spices, silk, dyes.  These strange goods from faraway places made medieval markets fascinating place to visit.

Local Trade  ______________________would bring in their extra produce and trade it with the local _________________________________for better tools or whatever they needed for their farms. The merchants/craftsmen needed the farmed goods because they did not have a farm of their own.

Money and Banking  Eventually the economy needed an easier way to conduct business and the bartering system was replaced with___________________________.  _____________________________: were men who knew the values of different kinds of sizes and coins and would exchange money from other towns for local coins.

__________________: comes from the Italian word banca, meaning bench. Moneychangers would conduct business at a bench so people would refer to doing banking business as “going the bench”. Eventually, banks became more than just a place to exchange money. They also began to lend money to merchants. They also issued_________________________. This allowed the merchant to deposit his money in the bank and travel with a small note rather than large bundle of money.