: No, not really. People put way too much emphasis on the fact that Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon studies. He was well-versed in other languages, and loved the Greek and Roman classics (he often made allusions to them). He was something of a Biblical scholar as well, although he was quite modest about that part of his life (and nonetheless wrote long and profound discussions of his faith for his family).

: But Middle-earth is an entire world, not just a country. Tolkien developed many different cultures for that world, and none of them are rooted in Anglo-Saxon England. He chose to use the Anglo-Saxon language to represent Rohan's native language, but the similarities stop there (since the Rohirrim are generic northmen, they resemble many ancient Germanic peoples equally, and some more than the Anglo-Saxons).

: : ...But that did not exist for very long, and there is no trace
: : of a fallen roman empire in ME (unless you count Numenor, and
: : equate Aragorn to a pagan Charlemaigne recreating the 'holy
: : roman empire' in the shadow of what once was)...

: The Eldar and Edain were monotheists, and it would not be improper to view them as proto JudeoChristians, for their Iluvatar is the God of the Bible, as much as Tolkien could make such an identification. But the Eldar and Edain came before the covenants. They would not be pagans, but are neither Jews nor Christians.

: :...If you want to go back to a really prolonged period of pagan
: : rule you would have to go back to pre-roman tribalism. This
: : covered most of northern Europe right until the Romans came.
: : Tolkien's linguistic knowledge would not be quite out of depth
: : here, as the ancient Britons must have spoken a language
: : related to modern Welsh, and he may have traded this for
: : English in his 'translation'. In other areas of Europe, related
: : languages were spoken. The ancient Britons, however, seem a
: : shade too ferocious for most of the peoples of ME to me...

: Tolkien's peoples were not simply modelled on northern Europe's people. He drew on the Egyptians for Dunadan culture, for instance, and many people identify an Arabic or Indian feel in some of the Haradrim.

: : ...Making a ME movie in this setting would thus also be a
: : little out of place. So, whatever Jackson does, and whatever
: : design of saddles, architechture, clothing, weaponry etc he
: : decides to adopt, it will be historically wrong. Faced with
: : this dilemma, I don't see why he shouldn't pick late mediaevil.

: [snip]

: Because there is really nothing of the late medieval period in Tolkien. It's simply misleading to show Middle-earth as a medieval world. Bree's houses weren't made of wattle and daub. They were made of stone. And they weren't all clustered together in a medieval village-like fashion, either. The main road ran past the houses, not through them.

: I have yet to see what Minas Tirith will look like, but if the outer walls are not massive and black (and smooth), but rather seem to be made of simple stone like some medieval castle, I'm going to gag. And I hope the carts and wagons aren't drawn by horses -- Tolkien said the people of the city were amazed at Shadowfax, for they had very few horses of their own and seldom saw any in the city itself.

I've seen a few of Michael's arguements on the non late medievalness of middle earth and for the most part I tend to agree. I think it is somehwat of a mistake to try and put middle earth into any specific time period at all or any specific culture because the good professor used things from many time periods and cultures and added in quite a few of his own touches and changes consequently it seems unlikely that it would be possible to pick a time period and culture in which to portray middle earth and have any degree of real accuracy.
The buildings of middle earth for example very depending on the location, from the shire the buildings (and wholes) tend to be actually much more modern than late medieval and are much more 18-19 century english in their interior design. It is my opinion that to a lesser degree the same is true of bree. The Prancing poney in bree seems to me much more reminicent of a village inn or country inn, in early modern england than it does anything out of the middle ages. As for arcitecture in rivendel I've never been fully able to get a satisfactory image for elrond's house just because it seems to be too full of wonders to put into any one single mental image, It seems that I remember that tolkien had drawn some pictures of rivendel but I'm not sure exactly everything he included.
The architecture of numenor and gondor etc, would seem to be me to be much more classical world style, probably something like Byzantine, a bit of the east and the west mixed.
The weapons and armor seem to me to be very much described as the kind of things one would see in dark ages Europe with some classical world stuff (and yes a few egyption influences (but mainly in the head gear I think)).
and I won't go into culture because I agree with pretty much everything michael said there.

on a art note... I think my favorite tolkien artist is probablt Ted Naismith. (although angus mcbride is right up there too (as well as being a great all around military art illustrator)

Thorongil