 While burghs acted as centres of basic crafts . These included the manufacture of shoes , clothes , dishes , pots , joinery , bread and ale , which would normally be sold to inhabitants and visitors on market days . However , there were relatively few developed manufacturing industries in Scotland for most of this period . By the late fifteenth century , there were the beginnings of a native iron @-@ casting industry , which led to the production of cannon and of the silver and goldsmithing for which the country would later be known . As a result , the most important exports were unprocessed raw materials , including wool , hides , salt , fish , animals and coal , while Scotland remained frequently short of wood , iron and , in years of bad harvests , grain , which was imported in large quantities , particularly from the Baltic ports , through Berwick and Ayr . 
