Yea I made a static site generator with about 50 lines of code using make and pandoc:

http://stephenbalaban.com/static-site-generation-in-50-lines...

Most of the work is just creating the index.

make would be a nice companion, but it does not process files, it handles the order of files processingf (indeed, static sites generators and make go together quite nicely)

Pelican does in fact ship with a makefile for running tasks.