Didn’t Romans save their urine in jars to sell to `dry cleaners’? Series. Some of that stuff survived.
And a lot of the surviving Pompeii graffiti advertising prostitutes, random scatology and personal invective is pretty vivid stuff.
Pliny recorded Vesuvius’ rumblings for quite some time so
you would think they would have vacated the premises w/ their Buggus Outtus Bagguses.
The urine was collected by fullers, for the processing of wool (beats me, someone here must know); this actually helped in Roman cities, free-to-use urinals were set up all over, and the urine collected daily. At some point in the prime generations of the Empire, collected urine started to be taxed, imagine that.
Pliny the Elder was quite the naturalist/scientist, but was also in charge of the fleet at Naples. He went into the Bay, despite large chaotic waves, to organize the response. He insisted there was no danger, went to the home of a friend, took a bath, had some food and wine, and then the really nasty stuff started. He was overcome by poison gas as he brought up the rear of the group he was “leading”, and at least some of that group made it back to his ship and escaped. His adopted son, Pliny the Younger, had remained at a distance offshore, or on an unaffected landmass, and it is his description of the eruption that just barely managed to be preserved.
In general, there were not apparently all that many who fled in time to avoid that dangerous phase of the eruption, when large stones rained down, braining people, breaking bones, etc. Those who got outta dodge as soon as the eruption started were either smart or lucky. The town had been badly damaged by an earthquake some years earlier, and repairs were still under way when Pompeii was buried. The plaster of paris effigies that were found were mostly in the streets. There are probably more remains in the still-unexcavated sections of the town.
Interestingly, there was at least one find in modern times of an ancient shaft dug down into the fresh ash, presumably well after the eruption was over, and presumably by the property owner retrieving something important from his ruined home. Various coins and things have emerged from the couple of centuries of continual digging, including what appears to have been the temple treasury from the Temple of Isis.