Crossbows were very much second-best against the Longbow in terms of range & speed of shooting (hence the use of pavises by crossbowmen - & their vulnerability without them (as with the Genoese at Crecy)). No medieval army would employ crossbowmen if they had trained Longbowmen. Of course, the English dominance in the medieval period depended on the use of the longbow in conjunction with men at arms on foot (again, Crecy dealt the death-blow to the mounted cavalry charge
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The battle of Crećy where a 16-year-old Edward the Black Prince would earn his spurs, was no chivalric battlefield. By 1346 the English had lost interest in chivalry as a military occupation. The English were massively out numbered, and the French had assumed that the knights on both sides would battle it out on horseback, and that the smaller English force would be overwhelmed, ransomed and go home ruined. But the English were playing by a new rulebook, when they arrived at the battlefield most of the knights dismounted ready to fight on foot. They were relying on the support of their non-noble longbow men. The English Longbow was not a noble weapon, and not wielded by rich young nobles, in the right hands it was to prove to be a weapon of mass destruction; The French and their allies charged with full pageantry in the first five minutes the English loosed more than 3,000 arrows, the flower of French and Genoese chivalry was cut down by archers on sixpence a day. The French Knights mercilessly rode down the survivors of their own ineffective crossbowmen soon after their Genoese allies had succumbed to the English arrow storm. Here the notion of chivalry can be seen as a means by which to avenge so-called cowardice, even though the French Knights were doomed to suffer a similar fate, annihilated by the English cloth-yard arrow. They lost 5,000 men the English a few hundred.
http://www.authorsden.com/categories...id=17&id=18826
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So, the Dwarves' choice of Longbow or Crossbow probably depended on what weaponry their enemies chose).
As to the 'shieldwall' theory -
probable in some cases, but its essentially a defensive tactic. You certainly can't charge in a shieldwall formation. Again, it depends entirely on the tactics of your opponents. Certainly by the time of the English Civil Wars it had been found that shieldless pikemen were more effective than any kind of shieldwall. Shields disappeared from the battlefield when armour became effective enough to require two handed weapons like poleaxes/glaives to inflict injuries. If Orcish (or Elvish come to that) armour was strong enough to ward off a blow from a one-handed sword or axe then heavier, two-handed weapons would have been called for, & you can't then use a shield (unless, as pointed out earlier, you sling it across your back -
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The dwarves are exceedingly strong for their height, but most of these were
strong even for dwarves. In battle they wielded heavy two-handed mattocks; but each of them had also a short broad sword at his side and a round shield slung at his back. Their beards were forked and plaited and thrust into their belts. (The Clouds Burst)
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Seems that Tolkien envisioned both tactics - two-handed mattock for 'offence' & shield/short-sword for 'defence'.