Representations of individuals – also termed portraits – have been a focus in Classical Archaeology since the birth of the discipline. However, while much focus has been given to the portraits of rulers, kings and emperors, politicians and philosophers, and the influence that such portraiture had on expressions in the portraiture of the broader elites in the Roman Empire and beyond, a full study of representations of individuals made in local materials and often by local craftspeople is still missing. The Palmyra Portrait Project at Aarhus University has since 2012 collected and studied the more than 4,000 funerary limestone portraits from the oasis city and has shown in which ways such comprehensive studies change the ways in which portrait culture needs to be studied in Classical Archaeology in the future. The recently launched Semper Ardens Advance Grant project Locally Crafted Empires will broaden out the methodology used in the earlier project to the entire region of West Asia – the region encompassing Egypt in the south to Anatolia in the North, from the Tigris in the East to the Mediterranean coast – and will collect locally produced portraits in all kinds of materials: stone, painting, bronze, plaster, mosaics. This presentation introduces the project and draws on results from the Palmyra Portrait Project, while pointing to the future work to come and some of the new ideas in the LoCiS project, which is based on this vast – but never collected corpus of statements in stone.