Agree it's closer to early medieval than late medieval, but Post-Roman Europe contained 50m-ish people in countless villages and surviving towns that might not

Agree it's closer to early medieval than late medieval, but Post-Roman Europe contained 50m-ish people in countless villages and surviving towns that might not have written enough down to interest chroniclers, but would have been very much in evidence to anyone walking down from Northern Europe to Turkey to deliver a ring! Whereas Tolkien makes a point of emphasising how depopulated areas are. It's not that he simply avoids mentioning settlements where nothing interesting happens, it's that he makes a point of the Fellowship being isolated for the majority of the journey, and mapping and naming settlements that were supposed to be tiny military outposts or a lone abandoned inn or completely irrelevant to the story.