Makefile.am and Makefile.in?

["Mike" <karmindr one net>]

what does it mean when these two files are present in a directory and there
is NO regular Makefile?  how can the project be built from these
Makefile.am/in files?  There are also present a configure exec, a
config.h.in, config.in, aclocal.m4, and stamp-h.in, all of which I have not
seen before inside a project directory.  Was this project made by some linux
IDE type environment and these are all generated files or something like
that?  if these files are not necessary or important I would like to get rid
of them and strip things down to just the usual essentials like the .h,.c,
and Makefile...