yes, that is generally (well, I think so) the reccommended way to animate non-deforming parts of skeletons (actually, if you were doing just a skeleton, that's how you'd rig it).

Additionally, you can look into something called skin weights - I believe there are a couple of tutorials in the maya documentation, beyond what you can find elsewhere. Skin weights allow you to tell geometry how much they're affected by certain joints (and how much a joint affects certain geometry). Haven't messed with it myself, but I know the basic concept.