No. You've got that backwards. You should assume that when you fail to understand such foundational concepts that your understanding of the process is flawed. Assuming that you, in a pristine absence of any knowledge of the process, are smarter than all those who spend their lives learning it is beyond mere arogance.
As for controls, the concept is simple. You know when the sample was made. If the sample's result is the date it was made, you know the machine was working fine. If it's off, you can use the controls to figure out by how much it was off. There are some technical details (for example, you use controls with about the same date as you'd expect--in this case this would include both a 1st century and a 14th century artifact, along with others--because calibration is only ever accurate within a range and you need to make sure you're not outside that range). That said, until you understand the basics I don't think we should confuse you with the details. In general, controls are there so that we can see how accurate the machine is, by comparing the known date against the results.
