The confernce Crafting Portraits: Local and Regional Perspectives in West Asia and Egypt (100 BCE – 500 CE) was held at the Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen from 5-6 March 2026. Organized within the framework of the Locally Crafted Empires project, the confernce brought together scholars to examine how local and regional communities in Western Asia and Egypt responded to various imperial hegemonies through the creation of individual portraits. The event was organized by Michael Blömer, Rubina Raja, and Ben Russell, who chaired the sessions and fruiteful discussions on identity, representation, and cultural agency.

The conference challenged traditional scholarly approaches that have often treated portraits from peripheral regions as mere passive reflections of imperial centers. Instead, the conference papers analyzed the local portraiture as active expressions of locally shaped identity. A central focus was the variety of materials employed in portrait-making, including plaster busts, floor mosaics, stone reliefs and sculptures, metalwork, and painted portraits on wood. This diversity highlighted the sophisticated technical knowledge and material supply networks available to local craftspeople.

Particularly fruitful discussions emerged from comparative papers examining sites with abundant portrait production alongside those sites with few to no portraits. These contrasting cases sparked important conversations about local choices: why did some communities developed strong portrait traditions while others refrained largely or entirely? Participants explored how individual and group decisions interacted with pre-existing cultural habits and the pressures of imperial influence, revealing a complex negotiation between local autonomy and external power structures.

The conference successfully demonstrated that ancient portraits should be understood not as simple imitations of distant imperial values, but as primary evidence for studying how imperial systems operated on the ground. By considering shifting influences from Greek, Roman, Parthian, and Sasanian powers across a broad timespan, the conference showed the dynamic nature of intersecting identities on individual, local, and regional levels. The proceedings, to be published with Brepols in 2027, promise to reshape how scholars approach material culture in the provinces, moving beyond center-periphery narratives toward more nuanced understandings of local agency and cultural production.