The database, developed by Luca Rigobianco, is part of the research project The Ancient Veneti and the Celts meet the Romans. The changes in social organization between the III rd century BC and the I st century AD in light of new documents directed by Professor Anna Marinetti and funded by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

This first version of the VDAN database, released in November 2019, is a sample collecting all the Venetic inscriptions containing the institutional term ekupetari- and connected forms (ekvopetar(i)-, ep(p)etari-), which probably refer to a funerary monument of a specific social class, as well as ekupeta(bo)-, which can be in some way related to the same social class.

The corpus is edited following the standard epigraphic conventions. It is searchable by descriptive data (ancient find spot, type of inscription, type of monument, material, dating, alphabet, language, institutional terms) and textual strings. An EpiDoc encoding is also provided for each inscription, thus ensuring retrieval and interoperability with other databases. The inscriptions are accompanied, whenever possible, by a photograph and/or a drawing.

The database will be progressively expanded. A new version, including all the inscriptions containing institutional terms related to the libertine status, will be released within March 2020.