As regards the Dunlendings, I have always thought that if this people were so numerous and strong that they were able to contest the rule of Rohan with the Rohirrim on occasion, and mostly be in a state of border raiding with them, then they would have had no difficulty spreading westward into Minhiriath where no resistance would be offered to them. The population of Southern Minhiriath at the time of TWOTR could easily have been larger than Tolkien appears to indicate.

Tolkien likes to give the impression of Eriador being largely desolate at the end of the Third Age, though he only really describes those areas through which the characters in the books travel. I think that there may have been a considerable, if unevenly distributed, and primitively organised, population of subsistence farmers and herders in many parts of Eriador. Given the relatively intense activities of the Rangers in protection of Eriador from evil beings I like to think that this was for the sakes of somewhat more than the small enclaves of the Shire and Bree.