[1] Welcker was a pioneer in the field of archaeology, and was one of the first to insist, like Böckh and his pupil Karl Otfried Müller, on the necessity of co-ordinating the study of Greek art and religion with philology, in opposition to the methods of the older Hellenists,[1] like Gottfried Hermann, which they perceived as too narrow.

The later workers took as their aim the complete reconstruction of the ancient life, in contrast with members of the school of Hermann, who were disposed to limit the field to the language and text of the Greek and Roman writers.

Welcker was thoroughly imbued with the harmony of the whole Greek conception, whether expressed in art, literature, or religion, and it was to the presentation of this as a complete whole that he devoted his efforts.

Besides early work on Aristophanes, Pindar, and Sappho, whose character he vindicated, he edited Alcman (1815), Hipponax (1817), Theognis (1826) and the Theogony of Hesiod (1865), and published a Sylloge epigrammatum Graecorum (Bonn, 1828).

His editions and biography of Zoega, his Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Auslegung der alten Kunst (Göttingen, 1817, 8) and his Alte Denkmäler (5 vols., 1849–1864) contain his views on ancient art.